SECTARIAN CONFLICT AND INABILITY TO CONSTRUCT A NATIONAL

IDENTITY IN NORTHERN IRELAND IN CHRISTINA REID’S “TEA IN A

CHINA CUP,” “DID YOU HEAR THE ONE ABOUT THE IRISHMAN … ?,”

“JOYRIDERS,” “THE BELLE OF THE BELFAST CITY,” AND “MY NAME,

SHALL I TELL YOU MY NAME?”

A THESIS SUBMITTED TO

THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES

OF

MIDDLE EAST TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY

BY

BEDRETTİN YAZAN

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS

FOR

THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS

IN

THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LITERATURE

JULY 2008

Approval of the Graduate School of Social Sciences

______________________ Prof. Dr. Sencer AYATA

Director I certify that this thesis satisfies all the requirements as a thesis for the degree of Master of Arts.

______________________

Prof. Dr. Wolf KÖNİG Head of Department

This is to certify that we have read this thesis and that in our opinion it is fully adequate, in scope and quality, as a thesis for the degree of Master of Arts.

______________________

Assist. Prof. Dr. Nurten BiRLiK Supervisor

Examining Committee Members

Dr. Deniz Arslan. (METU, ELIT) ______________________ Assist. Prof. Dr. Nurten BİRLİK. (METU, ELIT) ______________________ Assist. Prof. Dr. Bilge N. ZİLELİ ALKIM. (Atılım, ELIT) ______________________

iii

I hereby declare that all information in this document has been obtained and presented in accordance with academic rules and ethical conduct. I also declare that, as required by these rules and conduct, I have fully cited and referenced all material and results that are not original to this work.

Name, Surname: Bedrettin Yazan Signature :

iv

ABSTRACT

SECTARIAN CONFLICT AND INABILITY TO CONSTRUCT A NATIONAL IDENTITY IN NORTHERN IRELAND IN CHRISTINA REID’S “TEA IN A

CHINA CUP,” “DID YOU HEAR THE ONE ABOUT THE IRISHMAN … ?,” “JOYRIDERS,” “THE BELLE OF THE BELFAST CITY,” AND “MY NAME,

SHALL I TELL YOU MY NAME?”

Yazan, Bedrettin

M.A., Department of English Literature

Supervisor: Assist. Prof. Dr. Nurten Birlik

July 2008, 107 Pages

Based on Christina Reid’s five Plays “Tea in a China Cup,” “Did You Hear the One

About the Irishman … ?,” “Joyriders,” “The Belle of the Belfast City,” and “My

Name, Shall I Tell You My Name?” the aim of this study is to put under discussion

the idea that the sectarian conflict between the two ethno-religious communities in

Northern Ireland is maintained deliberately and a national identity unique to the

people in this country cannot be constructed at least in the near future. The

Protestants in Northern Ireland cannot choose Irishness as a national identity because

the Irishness has been monopolized by the Catholics, and cannot adopt the

v

Britishness as a national identity because of the varieties in the social factors they

have. Likewise, the Catholics in Northern Ireland do not call themselves British

because their Catholicism involves an Irish identity with the rejection of the British

rule, and they cannot truly entitle themselves Irish due to the differences in social

conditions. However, both factions try to adhere themselves to a national identity

through their communal ideology. The Protestants claim that they are part of Britain,

while the Catholics claim that they are members of Irish Nation. This situation has

led to reluctance in both communities to stop the conflictual circumstances which

encourage both groups to tether to their traditions more intensely, to contribute to the

otherization process reinforcing their social identity and lead them to impose their

working ideology on their new members whose divergence from traditions will

definitely pose a threat to their identity. Also, in this country the forgetting /

remembering process, which is actually exploited to forge a national identity, is

orchestrated by the two communities to enlarge the intercommunal chasm through

the narration of the old stories and memories, creation of stories, commemoration

activities and museumizing certain objects.

Throughout the study the key points which will be highlighted are as follows: nation,

national identity and nation building process, the sectarian conflict between the two

communities in Northern Ireland, maintenance of conflictual situation and the

employment of the forgetting / remembering process in Northern Ireland.

Keywords: Nation, national identity, nation building process, the sectarian conflict in

Northern Ireland, forgetting / remembering process, organization of social memory,

narration of old stories and memories, otherization.

vi

ÖZ

CHRISTINA REID’İN “ÇİNİ FİNCANDA ÇAY,” “İRLANDALI HAKKINDA ŞUNU DUYDUN MU …?” “EĞLENCE SÜRÜCÜLERİ,” “BELFAST ŞEHRİNİN GÜZELİ” VE “ADIM, ADIMI SÖYLEYEYİM Mİ?” OYUNLARINDA KUZEY

İRLANDA’DA DİNİ ÇATIŞMA VE ULUS KİMLİĞİNİN OLUŞTURULAMAMASI

Yazan, Bedrettin

Yüksek Lisans Tezi, İngiliz Edebiyatı

Tez Yöneticisi: Yrd. Doç. Dr. Nurten Birlik

Temmuz 2008, 107 Sayfa

Bu çalışmanın amacı, Christina Reid’in “Çini Fincanda Çay,” “İrlandalı Hakkında

Şunu Duydun mu …?” “Eğlence Sürücüleri,” “Belfast Şehrinin Güzeli” ve “Adım,

Adımı Söyleyeyim Mi?” oyunlarına dayandırarak, Kuzey İrlanda’daki iki etnik ve

dini topluluk arasındaki çatışmanın nasıl devam ettirildiğini ve bu ülkede sadece

kendi halkına özgü bir ulusal kimliğin oluşturulamamasını irdelemektir. Kuzey

İrlanda’daki Protestanlar ulusal kimlik olarak İrlandalılığı seçemezler, çünkü bu

kimlik Katoliklerin tekeli altındadır. İngilizliği de sahip oldukları sosyal etkenlerin

farklılığı sebebiyle gerçek anlamda seçemezler. Aynı şekilde, Kuzey İrlanda’daki

Katolikler kendilerine ulusal kimlik olarak İngilizliği seçemezler, çünkü Katolik

vii

olmaları İngiliz yönetimini reddeden bir İrlanda kimliği içerir. İrlandalılığı da sosyal

şartların değişikliğinden ötürü gerçek anlamda benimseyemezler. Ancak her iki taraf

da topluluk ideolojileri yoluyla ulusal bir kimliğe bağlanmaya çalışırlar. Protestanlar

Britanya’nın üyeleri olduklarını iddia ederken, Katolikler de İrlanda Ulusuna bağlı

olduklarını iddia ederler. Bu durum her iki grupta da çatışma ortamına son verme

konusunda bir isteksizliğe sebep olur. Bu ortam onların geleneklerine daha sıkı

bağlanmalarına yardımcı olur; sosyal kimliklerini pekiştiren ötekileştirme sürecine

katkıda bulunur ve toplulukları, geleneklerden sapmaları bir tehdit unsuru olan yeni

üyelerine ideolojilerini empoze etmeye yöneltir. Bunun yanında, aslında ulusal

kimlik oluşturma sürecinde kullanılan unutma / hatırlama süreci bu ülkede her iki

topluluk tarafından eski öykülerin ve anıların anlatılması, öyküler yaratma, anma

törenleri ve belli nesneleri müzeleştirme yoluyla topluluklar arası çatlağın

genişletilmesi amacıyla uygulanmaktadır.

Bu çalışmada irdelenecek ana kavramlar şöyledir: Ulus, ulusal kimlik, ulus inşa etme

süreci, Kuzey İrlanda’daki iki topluluk arasındaki çatışma, çatışma ortamının devam

ettirilmesi ve Kuzey İrlanda’da unutma / hatırlama sürecinin kullanımı.

Anahtar sözcükler: Ulus, ulusal kimlik, ulus inşa etme süreci kavramları, Kuzey

İrlanda’daki çatışma, unutma / hatırlama süreci, sosyal hafızanın düzenlenmesi, eski

öykülerin ve anıların anlatılması, ötekileştirme.

viii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my sincere appreciation to all the people without whose

constant support and help this study would never have been accomplished.

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my thesis supervisor, advisor, mentor,

Assist. Prof. Nurten Birlik, for her great inspiration, detailed supervision, infinite

patience, and invaluable contributions. I am sincerely grateful to her for her

enthusiasm about the work. I would like to take this opportunity to mention that she

has worked with me in close collaboration, presented substantial feedback

throughout the study.

Besides, I would like to extend my gratitude to my thesis committee members Dr.

Deniz Arslan for her kindness, great efforts, and detailed comments, and Assist. Prof.

Dr. Bilge Zileli for her helpful suggestions and hospitality.

My wholehearted appreciation goes to my exceptional colleagues at Atılım

University, especially Mete Akcaoğlu and Kübra Yüksel who kept their confidence

in my ability, never lost their patience and always supported me at difficult times of

distress.

I also wish to thank Ali Fuad Selvi and Babürhan Üzüm, my dearest friends, who

showed their kind interest in my study, and gave me friendly support during the

process, especially accessing some sources.

Finally, my family deserves a word of appreciation. I am deeply grateful to my

mother Münüse Yazan and my father İsmail Yazan for encouragement and support

they provided. They not only never lost confidence in me but also sincerely

supported me in any moment of my life.

ix

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PLAGIARISM ………………………………………………………………………iii

ABSTRACT .…………………………………………………………………..……iv

ÖZ .……………………………………………………………………..……………vi

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ……………………………………………………….viii

TABLE OF CONTENTS …………………………………………………..…...…. ix

CHAPTER

I. INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………….…1

1.1 Christina Reid in Irish Drama…………………………………………………1

1.2 Historical Setting of the Troubles”……………………………………………3

1.3 The Sectarian Conflict in Northern Ireland……………………………………8

1.4 Nation, Nation Building Process and National Identity ……………………..11

II. THE RELUCTANCE TO DESIST THE CONFLICTUAL SITUATION IN

NORTHERN IRELAND IN “TEA IN A CHINA CUP,” “DID YOU HEAR THE

ONE ABOUT THE IRISHMAN … ?,” “JOYRIDERS,” “THE BELLE OF THE

BELFAST CITY,” AND “MY NAME, SHALL I TELL YOU MY

NAME?”………………………………………..…………………………………. 37

2.1 Adherence to the Existing Values of the Community ………………………38

2.2 Otherization and Maintenance of the Chasm between ‘Them’ and ‘Us’…….47

2.3 Inculcating the New Generation……………………………………………. 58

x

III. THE EMPLOYMENT OF THE FORGETTING / REMEMBERING PROCESS

FOR THE CONTINUATION OF THE SECTARIAN CLEAVAGE IN CHRISTINA

REID’S PLAYS “TEA IN A CHINA CUP,” “DID YOU HEAR THE ONE ABOUT

THE IRISHMAN … ?,” “JOYRIDERS,” “THE BELLE OF THE BELFAST CITY,”

AND “MY NAME, SHALL I TELL YOU MY NAME?”…………………………69

3.1 The Old Stories and Memories..……………………………………………..72

3.2 Creation of Stories .………………………………………………………… 86

3.3 Commemoration Activities …………………………………………………91

3.4 Museumizing ……………………………………………………………… 93

VI. CONCLUSION…………………………………………………….…………..98

BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………...………….103

1

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

1. Problem of National identity in Northern Ireland against the background

of three concepts “nation, national identity and nation building process”

1.1 Christina Reid in Irish Drama

Ireland has valued theatre as one of its crucially important elements since the

second half of the eighteenth century, and even though the colonial

administration introduced this literary genre to Ireland, the Irish nation witnessed

the production of many eminently prolific playwrights who made an ineffably

prominent contribution to this culture. Largely due to the influence of this

colonial administration and the appealing literary ambiance of London, most of

these Irish dramatists felt obliged to settle down in England and pursue their

literary career there. The most influential ones were Dion Boucicault, Sean

O’Casey, John Synge, William Butler Yeats, Oscar Wilde, Samuel Beckett and

George Bernard Shaw. Apparently, among the salient figures of Irish Drama were

not any female playwrights, which made it look as a male-dominated

phenomenon till the turn of the century when Lady Augusta Gregory, the co-

founder of the Irish Literary Theatre and the Abbey Theatre, penned plethora of

plays which were performed by these companies. Since then, women playwrights

have played a principal role in the country’s theatrical culture.

Christina Reid is considered to be one of these women dramatists and one of the

followers of the female tradition beginning with Lady Gregory, whose influence

on the literary canon towards the end of the twentieth century can be easily

discerned. Born into a fiercely Protestant Belfast working-class family in 1942,

Reid left school at fifteen to work in a range of menial and administrative jobs

before returning to full-time education in her mid-thirties. As a degree to pursue

in her further education Reid chose English, Sociology and Russian studies at

2

Queen’s University, Belfast, but in 1983 when “Tea in a China Cup” won a

Thames TV Award and a residency at Belfast Lyric Theatre, she left her studies

so that she could devote her full concentration to her writing. She made use of her

family experiences as a source for her plays in which she boldly questioned

problems of nationalism and colonialism by focusing on those who are

segregated from the scope of “official” history, namely working class women

(Delgado xii). “In sorting through ideologies from family and state, Reid's

characters tend, more than anything else, to be searching for a coherent self-

vision--oftentimes finding themselves in conflict with the beliefs of their families

and of their historical positioning within Irish culture” (McDonough 300). She

provides the theatergoers with the portrayal of the pangs that the women have

been suffering from owing to the traditional imposition by the society and their

aversion to this pressure.

While they are making a classification of the dramatists of Northern Ireland,

critics evade a categorization based on regional origin. Many writers from

Northern Ireland have mentioned that they select for themselves the identity of

Irishness instead of Britishness. Likewise, Christina Reid emphasizes that she

perceives herself an Irish even though she was born into a Protestant family.

According to the classification which is based on the subject matter, along with

Martin Lynch and Anne Devlin, Reid is regarded as a “‘political’ dramatist,

engaging in a pseudo-documentary, largely realist dialectic with the Troubles”

(Delgado xiii). Reid can be deemed to have become one of the playwrights

writing “the Troubles play” whose emergence is marked by Morash by the mid-

1970s, and “it was possible to identify a distinct genre of play dealing with

political violence in Northern Ireland, known as ‘the Troubles play’” (334). In

addition, Delgado explains how Reid does not conform to the preceding theatrical

traditions:

Reid’s work … playfully deconstructs established genres, and cannot be

easily attributed to a ‘realist’ or ‘poetic’ tradition. What her plays do

constantly demonstrate is the fact that political theatre can be witty,

dynamic, challenging, formally inventive and wickedly humorous.” (xiii)

3

She reveals a vivid portrayal of the Protestant and the Catholic communities,

namely the inflexibility of the traditions and prejudices both sides hold for the

other and how the truth is disrupted for the sake of these rigid conventions and

biases. Some background information on the controversial and complicated

political atmosphere in which she wrote her plays would prepare the ground for a

more comprehensive analysis of her works.

1.2 Historical Setting of the “Troubles”

In the history of Northern Ireland, the civil disturbance or the ethnic clash that

exacerbated from the late 1960s till the Belfast Agreement on 10 April 1998 is

labelled as “Troubles” which have had a remarkably striking impact upon the

social memory of the two groups and brought about the widening of the chasm

between these groups. However, “The ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland, as the

locals call the conflict, have a longer history than is often thought” (Kuusisto-

Apronen 121). Norman / English soldiers invaded Ireland in the 12th

century, and

until the mid-sixteenth century, political violence in Ireland was primarily

motivated by what today is referred to as national identity. The English found a

people having a different language and customs from themselves on this island.

The following four hundred years witnessed countless violent clashes between

native Irish and invading English people (White 136).

In the 16th century, with the Reformation, religion became important, and the

Irish and the Old English in Ireland remained Catholic. However, most people in

Great Britain embraced Protestantism. The Catholic Irish chiefs who rebelled

against the invaders and lost in 1601 absconded to Europe a few years later.

Then, their lands – in Ulster in the North of Ireland – were confiscated and given

to English and Scottish settlers, which led Tonge to maintain that “the origins of

the current political problems of Northern Ireland lie in historical conflicts

between Planter and Gael” (1). In the 1640s, the native Irish in Ulster rebelled.

They were supported by the Old English in Ireland as both groups were Catholic.

Henceforth, Anglo-Irish politics had to handle religion and national identity as an

intertwined issue.

4

Oliver Cromwell’s invasion in 1649 was fraught with particular, protestant

religious zeal. Cromwell treated Catholics in Ireland more harshly than he did

Catholics in England. More and more Irish land and property was appropriated

and given to reliable Protestants: “Catholic aspirations of retaking territory were

revived by the accession to the English throne of their co-religionist James II in

1685” (Tonge 2). In the late 1680s, William of Orange seized the throne in

England. Deposed in the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688 by William, James II

raised an army supported by many Irish Catholics. He was supported by his

fellow Catholics in Ireland, who sought relief from Protestant domination. At the

Battle of the Boyne, James’s army was defeated by William’s army, which was

the third time in a century the Irish suffered the results of a lost war.

The defeat of the Catholic king had inevitably led to a change in the political

administration on the island:

William’s victory placed power in Ireland firmly in the hands of the

Anglican ‘Ascendancy’ governing class. They were the group with

governmental experience in Ireland, and enjoyed the most powerful

connections with political and ecclesiastical leaders in England.

(Ranelagh 68-9)

As expected, the establishment of a Protestant ascendancy in Ireland marked the

commencement of the miseries that the Catholic majority would endure. By the

close of the seventeenth century, the Catholics in Ireland had had their

landholdings reduced to 14 per cent of the useful land – a third less than when

James II had come to the throne. The struggle for religious, political and social

control of Ireland led to the result that “the native Irish were excluded from Irish

social and political affairs” (White 136). This severe exclusion buttressed by the

British government would incite the Catholic populace to counterpoise harshly to

regain the position in their homeland.

Like every European country, the island of Ireland felt the pervasive effect of the

revolutions taking place in the eighteenth century. The people endeavoring to

survive under the British yoke through ascendancy were heralded about what

kind of alterations the French and American Revolutions gave rise to. As a

5

consequence, “in the late 18th

century the political philosophy of Republicanism

was introduced into the mix. The Society of United Irishmen, the first Irish

Republicans, was founded by Presbyterian merchants and manufacturers in

Belfast and Dublin” who were pushed by the desire for economic and political

freedom (White 136). Irish Catholics, who yearned for getting political and social

relief, opted to support them. However, the United Irishmen who rebelled in 1798

were unsuccessful unlike the republicans in the United States of America and

France because of the different social and political dynamics. This republican

movement which was predominated by the Catholic members found its

counterpart in the Protestant community, which helped draw the gulf between the

two religious groups: “The Orange Order taking its name from William of

Orange was founded oathbound to support and defend the King and its heirs as

long as he or they support the Protestant ascendancy.” The creation of this

polarization in Ireland points out that “not only were sectarian divisions again

being felt, but also the fundamentally conditional loyalty of Ulster Protestants to

the British government was spelt out” (Ranelagh 91). The amount of assistance

the Protestant population received from the British government would determine

the degree of the intensity of their loyalty to the Crown.

The sharp schism which had been getting more and more acute and detrimental

for both parties had caused a great deal of bloodshed. In response to violence in

Ireland, the Act of Union (January 1, 1801) disbanded an independent Irish

parliament and created the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The

immediate consequence of this Act was the ending of five-hundred-year-old Irish

parliament, and very suitably, the nationalist wing who aspired for an

independent Irish nation “regarded the Act as if it had ended Ireland’s national

identity” (Ranelagh 93), which aggravated and augmented their infuriation

towards the Crown. Thus, political violence in Ireland could not be brought to an

end with this act as now, Irish Republicans sought to achieve this nation through

force of arms. Consequently, there occurred republican ferocious rebellions in

1803, 1848, and 1867 which incremented the vehemence of the civil strife on the

island. The rebellions were not successful, yet this did not divert people

committed to an independent Irish Republic from their objectives. Again what

6

Catholic party supports is opposed by the Protestants, and thus throughout the

19th

century, the general Protestant community in Ireland – “Unionists” –

supported the Union, especially in the northeast Ireland. In other words, whilst

the nationalist majority was demanding the restoration of the Irish Parliament,

which would be possible with Home Rule bills, the unionist community was for a

British rule. As a result, “the Fenian attempt at rebellion and their subsequent

atrocities in 1867 forced the parliament’s attention in Westminster upon Ireland”

(Ranelagh 129). That is, nationalists’ reaction resulted in the enactment of Irish

Home Rules in 1886, 1894, 1914 and 1920 which were acrimoniously resisted by

the unionists. In Belfast in the 1880s, for example, there were widespread riots in

opposition to a Home Rule Bill for Ireland which were conducted by the loyalist

groups. Peculiarly the last two bills raised political issues of a most profound

kind. They have rightly retained their place in the history of the attempts by the

Liberal governments to satisfy the demands of Irish nationalists while retaining

the sovereignty of the UK parliament (O’Day 7). Therefore, it becomes apparent

that owing to its complicated nature, Irish problem proved to be really

challenging for the British governments to handle.

The year 1916 brought a rebellion to the island the day after Easter: “Greeted

with incredulity by the British Government and Irish populace alike, the 1916

Easter Rising was a revolt by 1,600 Irish volunteers, mainly from the IRB core

who assumed control of the organization” (Tonge 9). As Hennessey observes,

“the Easter Rising had two aims: to raise the cause of Ireland from a British

domestic concern to an international issue, and prevent the demise of separatist

ideal; it failed in the first, but succeeded in the second” (158). In this resurrection,

the republican mutineers failed, but this led them to reorganize themselves as the

Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the political party Sinn Fein. These two

organizations’ incentive was to break the connection of Ireland with the United

Kingdom. A revolutionary Irish government was founded by these groups in

Dublin, who performed military activities against the British intervention in

Ireland. The IRA and Sinn Fein succeeded in their attempts in most parts of

Ireland; however, in the northeast, they encountered the opposition of both the

state’s security agents – for example, the Royal Irish Constabulary – and a

7

Protestant paramilitary organization, the Ulster Volunteer Force. As a solution to

the political turbulence prevalent throughout Ireland, the British Government

passed the Government of Ireland Act (1920), which formed Northern Ireland,

which included six of the nine counties of the Province of Ulster, and the Irish

Free State by partitioning Ireland. This Act resulted in the establishment of two

parliaments under British jurisdiction, one based in Dublin, the other in Belfast:

“The former was to control certain affairs of the 26 counties of what became

known as Southern Ireland. The latter parliament was to exercise limited

authority over six counties in the north-east Ireland” (Tonge 11). At the time of

its foundation, Northern Ireland was more or less two-thirds Protestant and one-

third Catholic. The Irish Free State (declared a republic in 1949) was about 95

percent Catholic.

From the time it came into existence, Northern Ireland was not a secure state, and

it has been continuously

under threat, even if such threats were more rhetorical than real. The

obvious threat came from a Catholic and mainly nationalist minority

population who resented the creation of what they saw as an artificial state

devoid of geographical, historical or political logic. (Tonge 17)

In other words, “Catholics rejected both a dramatic shift of identity and the state

in which they unexpectedly found themselves” (O’Day 1), and the members of

this minority “saw themselves as trapped in an illegitimate, British held part of an

Irish state temporarily partitioned” (Tonge 17). It becomes manifest that the new

province was admitted by the Protestant community in Northern Ireland whereas

the Catholic community mostly repudiated it not only in Northern Ireland but also

in Irish Free State. Therefore, partition triggered a double minority situation.

Northern Ireland contained a Protestant majority which dominated a Catholic

minority who has got the belief that “they gerrymandered into a Protestant state.

Within Ireland as a whole the Protestant community was in the minority

position.” Bolstering their co-religionists’ ideology, the government of the Free

State/Republic which claimed that the entire island belongs to the Irish nation did

not accept Northern Ireland (White 138).

8

1.3 The Sectarian Conflict in Northern Ireland

Having explored the historical circumstances which generated the conundrums

concerning the sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland, description of these

problems and of social environment they led to prepares a wider ground for a

more comprehensive analysis. Mortimer throws light on the traits of religious

conflicts which “are sometimes between adherents of rival religious orthodoxies,

each of which in theory claims universal validity for itself” (xiii). Then, as an

elucidation of what causes these clashes, he remarks:

[T]he emphasis is seldom on the importance of converting ‘them’ to ‘our’

point of view. What is stressed is the urgency of defending and

strengthening ‘our’ community or way of life against ‘their’ aggression

and interference or excessive influence. (xiii)

He sums up his point with his statement that “the exponents of such rhetoric seem

implicitly to share Huntington’s view that humanity is quasi-permanently divided

into separate cultural communities” (xiii). The existence of demarcated cultural

groups is an unavoidable fact, which might also give way to sectarian clashes in

certain cases. To explain the character of the conflict in Northern Ireland,

Hennessey summarizes Steve Bruce’s argument that “the Northern Ireland

conflict is a ‘religious conflict’, and it is the fact that the competing populations

in Ireland adhered, and still adhere, to competing religious traditions which ‘has

given the conflict its enduring and intractable quality” (xiii). Religious traditions

have been a cardinal determiner in how the society is moulded, and effectuated

the crystallization of the cleavage between “the two local communities [which]

are often referred to simply as Protestants and Catholics” (Kuusisto-Apronen

121). This explanation is upheld by Miroslav Hroch’s assertion that “ethnic and

the ensuing national identities were mutually more sharply defined (and perhaps

also more conflicting) where religion rather than culture stood as the criterion”

(qtd in O’Day 13). Contrasting religious creeds of the communities prove to be a

lot more potent in substantiating the conflictual divide than the cultural

divergences.

9

Although they do not thoroughly overlap with one another and have got several

dissimilar connotations, the terms “Unionist, Loyalist, British” are used to

represent the Protestant identity and the ones “Nationalist, Republican, Irish” are

the labels employed for the Catholic community. As “being catholic or protestant

has been fundamental to what people have done and said over the past two

hundred years,” it has become a primary determiner of the major issues such as

family life, education, health care and social welfare; and has been highly

influential upon what kind of schools people go to, friends they had and spouses

they married (Inglis 59). However, the additional labels attached to these groups

demonstrate that the sectarian clash going on in the north-east of the island does

not involve solely a religious cleavage and the disparity of religious credos.

Mitchell elucidates this point:

The role of religion in conflict in Northern Ireland is highly contested.

Since the beginning of recent conflict, it has been a popular

misconception, particularly amongst external commentators, that two

religious groups are waging a holy war. Groups in Northern Ireland have

been portrayed as pre-modem and blinded by irrational religion. (2005:

112)

The clash is not stimulated only by the divergent religious ideologies as there are

many other shaping aspects to be taken into account: “In the sixteenth century,

religious denomination was indeed a real divider among people in Ireland. Since

then, the division between communities has become wider and more complex

(i.e. many social, political and cultural issues).” This classification rendered due

to the dissimilarities in religious creeds survived to be vital, yet their present role

commenced to involve loyalty to a communal identity (Kuusisto-Aprenon 121).

This indicates that religious outlook of the people has taken control of virtually

all the cultural spheres, which led the researchers to forge a novel term for that

concept: “cultural religion.” Expounding on the influence religion carries

concerning the society, Demerath concedes:

The most fundamental distinction in Northern Ireland is between cultural

Catholics and cultural Protestants. Neither is much involved in their

churches, but both are caught up in the religious legacies handed down

from family to family, neighborhood to neighborhood, and community to

community. (131)

10

Diffusion of these legacies tends to form a biased view of the opposing group.

Besides, these religious stances acquire a political dimension owing to the

external forces, namely the Irish Republic and The Great Britain. That is,

(Loyalist view) Unionism has become the political ideology of the Protestants

and (Irish Nationalism) Republicanism has been endowed to the Catholic

communal identity. The British State constructed Unionism as part of an ideology

of empire-building process in Ireland. In its various organizational manifestations

it has worked to identify and maintain overlapping of interests between Ireland’s

Protestant minority and those of the British state in general. Catholic ideology of

nationalist republicanism has been structured utterly at variance with Unionism:

“Republicanism in the Irish context has been a largely oppositional ideology

committed, in principle, to a secular all-Ireland state capable of overcoming the

divisions institutionalized by British rule” (O’Dowd 79). These two conflicting

ideologies generated several armed groups instigating a civil strife in Northern

Ireland peculiarly for the last three decades. In this line of thinking, Kuusisto-

Apronen notes:

Most notably the paramilitary campaigns of the Irish Republican Army

(IRA) and its splinter groups and their loyalist counterparts, the Ulster

Volunteer Force (UVF) and the Ulster Defence Army (UDA) and other

smaller Loyalist groupings, have cast a shadow over the past thirty years

of the violent conflict … This period is often called the Northern Irish

Troubles. (121)

The above mentioned unionist units are considered to be bolstered by the United

Kingdom and the Protestant dominated government in Northern Ireland; and the

ones bearing the ideology of Irish nationalism and republicanism are believed to

be assisted by the South. Having at its center the idea that Ireland should rid itself

of the British yoke, the IRA, which claims that the Catholic Irish minority in

Northern Ireland has been exposed to inequality by the government controlled by

the unionists, organized terrorist attacks aiming at the Protestant community

particularly the unionists both in Northern Ireland and Great Britain, and it was

supposed that these assaults were buttressed by the nationalist minority in the

north. The UVF and the UDA did not hesitate to retaliate the IRA’s strikes.

However, the environment created by this reciprocal violence engendered a civil

11

disturbance in every sphere of life and led to the creation and crystallization of

the intercommunal dispute. Thus, those who suffered most in the “Troubles” have

always been the civilians who have begun feeling more abhorrence for the other

community. That is, the chasm between the two segregated populations has

incredibly broadened and the “darkened” shadow started to inhibit people from

perceiving what they look at. The feeling of being assailed by the IRA

intimidated Protestants and made the Protestant government and public project

their revulsion on Catholic minority who:

were excluded from the dominant culture and suffered economic and

political discrimination. Evidence of continued inequality is still clear in

the fields of income, housing, wealth and employment, most notably in

the Protestant-loyalist alliance’s embargo on the minority ever holding

political office. (Inglis 72)

Among the issues Inglis concentrated on, Hepburn puts the emphasis on how

Catholics suffer in the sector of employment by noting that:

[I]n the majority of areas … in Protestant hands, Catholic had more

restricted access to public-sector jobs than was the case further south. In

the predominantly industrial areas … Protestants predominated in

management and in the skilled trades of modern industries.” (109)

The Catholic minority was kept away from most of the opportunities in Northern

Ireland because the intercommunal conflict has pervaded every walk of social

and political life. White concludes that: “Political violence in Northern Ireland is

hundreds of years in the making. It is not simply about religion, but instead

involves a complex mix of national identity, religion, and political aspirations”

(138). Therefore, the presentation of such terms as nation, nation formation

process and national identity could shed more light on the conflictual

conundrums experienced by the people in this country for centuries.

1.4 Nation, Nation Building Process and National Identity

Nations, which emerged as a novel sort of collectivity in Europe in the wake of

French Revolution, had to undergo a nation building route which ended up with

the dissemination of a national identity to each member of the masses. This

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collective identity is highly desirable by these members since, as Oommen

suggests, “human beings are identity seeking animals, both as individuals and as

collectivities” (35). That is, there exists a reciprocal liaison between nationals and

the nation. To point out this liaison, Poole states that:

Large numbers of … decent people have carried out unbelievable

atrocities for no better reason than their nation required them to.

Authoritarian and totalitarian regimes have crushed dissent, eliminated

opposition and trampled on civil liberties in the name of the nation. (1)

Here, the concept of nation and the pertinent phenomena should be explicated in

depth so that the sectarian clashes and civil disturbances in Northern Ireland can

be better illuminated and comprehended.

These three concepts with a tremendous impact upon almost all the radical

changes and crucial occurrences in the modern epoch prove to be thoroughly

interrelated. Therefore, one of these terms cannot be perceived or defined without

touching upon the other two. The theorists studying nation, nation building

process and national identity attempt to make a definition of nation that can

explicate the various formations of nations in the world even though they admit

that every nation building process has its own idiosyncratic attributes and

determining factors. Hence, there are several variations in defining the nation

depending on the focal point each theorist approaches the term. However, what

they are mostly in agreement is the fact that nation is an artificial, invented and

imagined entity, so nation building indeed involves nothing more than making the

masses imagine or invent a nation and a national identity in their minds. In the

introduction of his ground breaking book, Imagined Communities: Reflections on

the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Benedict Anderson notes that “nationality

or, as one might prefer to put it in view of that world’s multiple significations,

nation-ness, as well as nationalism, are cultural artifacts of a particular kind” (4).

He also states: “Nation is imagined because the members of even the smallest

nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of

them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion” (6). As a

remark on this famous definition, Poole maintains that “I take lives the image of

their communion to mean both that people conceive of themselves as belonging

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to the community, and also that the conception of the community informs the way

in which they live, relate to others, and so on” (11). Utterly pertinent to this sense

of belonging the members of the nation should hold, Connor, another leading

figure on this subject, puts the stress on the fact that the psychological bond

which gathers co-nationals depends on their common conviction that they have

got an ethnic relation. This is not an objective condition: Members of a nation do

not have to be ancestrally related. The critical issue is that they believe they are

(376–377) since “national communities are constituted by belief: Nations exist

when their members recognize one another as compatriots, and believe that they

share characteristics of the relevant kind” (Miller 22).

Whilst elucidating the link between literature and the construction of nation in his

article, Brennan points out that “nations are imaginary constructs that depend for

their existence on an apparatus of cultural fictions in which imaginative literature

plays a decisive role” (49). In his definition of nation, Gellner’s outlook backs up

the artificiality of the concept of nation by demonstrating that “nations are

artefacts of men’s convictions and loyalties and solidarities” (7). Besides, how

Poole approaches this imagination issue is of crucial importance: “What is

important is not so much that everyone imagines the same nation, but that they

imagine that they imagine the same nation” (16). Since this controversial

phenomenon is apparently an “imaginary construct,” the objective of the nation

formation process is to prepare a social and cultural environment which will help

the populace create an image of nation and their self image of national identity in

their mind. However, due to “the sheer complexity and variety of the ‘nation’ and

‘national identity’ [which] is an abstract and multidimensional construct that

touches on a wide range of spheres of life and manifests many permutations and

combinations” (Smith 144), the preparation of that sort of environment entails the

composition of various constituents. That is, imagining a nation is a lengthy route

on which the progression necessitates a great deal of time and involves the

monitoring of assorted elements.

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The initial and one of the most fundamental components of nation building

process is organization of memory. On the affiliation between history and forging

identities, Hall demonstrates that:

Far from being eternally fixed in some essentialised past, [identities] are

subject to the continuous ‘play’ of history, culture and power. Far from

being grounded in a mere ‘recovery’ of the past, which is waiting to be

found, and which, when found, will secure our sense of ourselves into

eternity, identities are the names we give to the different ways we are

positioned by, and position ourselves within, the narratives of the past.

(225)

While scrutinizing how the past of a nation has impacts on the identity

construction, the researcher should bear in mind the fact that the influence of the

past on identity is a more intricate aspect of national identity than a

straightforward and simple issue. There exists no unchanging national memory

whose recollection guarantees the nation formation. On the contrary, it “is

spontaneous, social, collective and encompassing; borne by living societies, it is

permanently evolving … with a cumulative, incremental view of the past”

(Whelan 97). To relate the imaginary nature of the national identity and memory,

Toni Morrison contends that “the act of imagination is bound up with memory”

(qtd. in Whelan 105). This imagination process is directed by “forgetting [which]

… is a crucial factor in the creation of a nation” (Renan, 11) because “the royal

road to a nation’s identity is its public memory” (Said 2003: 180). For Bhabha, “it

is this forgetting – a minus in origin – that constitutes the beginning of the

nation’s narrative, it is the analytical and rhetorical arrangement of this argument

that is more illuminating than any frankly historical or ideological reading” (310).

While delineating how French nation has been moulded, Ernest Renan obviously

presents an example for the forgetting / remembering process as an element of

nation building:

The essence of a nation is that all individuals have many things in

common, and also that they have forgotten many things. No French

citizen knows whether he is a Burgundian, an Alan, a Taifale, or a

Visigoth, yet every French citizen has to remember the massacre of Saint

Batholomew or the massacres that took place in the Midi in the thirteenth

15

century. There are not ten families in France that can supply proof of their

Frankish origin. (11)

He highlights that in order to be a French “citizen,” each member of the French

nation had to forget their ethnic identities such as Burgundian, an Alan, a Taifale,

or a Visigoth whose recollection hinders them from gathering under the identity

of Frenchness. Besides, they had to recall “the massacre of Saint Batholomew or

the massacres that took place in the Midi in the thirteenth century” when the

whole population in France was exposed to ruthless torture so that the bondage

among the French citizens can keep its strength (11). Thus, although only a few

people can truly prove that they are from Frankish origin, forgetting /

remembering some dates and origins considerably adds to the creation of a

French nationality in its people’s minds and its sustenance throughout history.

Another eminent authority putting emphasis on forgetting / remembering is

Benedict Anderson who states that “one is also struck by the peremptory syntax

of doit avoir oublie (not doit oublie) – ‘obliged already to have forgotten’ – which

suggests … that ‘already having forgotten’ ancient tragedies is a prime

contemporary civic duty” (200). To exemplify his point, he makes use of an

instance from American nation building process: “A vast pedagogical industry

works ceaselessly to oblige young Americans to remember the hostilities of

1861-65 as a great ‘civil’ war between ‘brothers’ rather than between – as they

briefly were – two sovereign nation-states” (201). Certain affairs are selected to

make the people and peculiarly the new members of the nation during the

socialization period recollect, and certain events are selected to be forgotten. To

accentuate the significance of a certain national past, Poole suggests that:

As I become conscious of myself as a member of a nation, I become

aware of a certain past – the history of my nation – and I learn to

appropriate it as a past which is mine – though one I share with many

others. … It is a past in which I am morally implicated. (72)

The nationals are anticipated to internalize the national history they are

inculcated, which gives a boost to their membership and bondage to their nation.

The other case referred to by Anderson is from England:

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English history textbooks offer the diverting spectacle of a great Founding

Father whom every school child is taught to call William the Conqueror.

The same child is not informed that William spoke no English, indeed

could not have done so, since the English language did not exist in his

epoch; nor is he told ‘Conqueror of What?’ For the only intelligible

modern answer would have to be ‘Conqueror of the English,’ which

would turn the old Norman predator into a more successful precursor of

Napoleon and Hitler. (201)

Anderson vividly displays that to contribute to the creation of an English nation

in the minds of the people in England, some truths or so-called truths in history

are intensely accentuated; and some others are intentionally concealed and

strongly suppressed. Bhabha puts a concluding remark on this issue of

“obligaton” by noting that “being obliged to forget becomes the basis for

remembering the nation, peopling it anew, imagining the possibility of other

contending and liberating forms of cultural identification.” (310)

As one of the tools that help the forgetting / remembering process, archeology

emerges as a branch of science. The initial goal of archeology is to unearth, name

and classify historical remnants or ruins or monuments which prop up the

national identity that people are constructing in their imagination. Then, so-called

real stories are invented and supposed to be lived by the ancestors in this

homeland. The photographs of these historical places are taken, and books and

catalogues including their photos and information about them are published and

distributed throughout the country. In order to disseminate the stories of these

places among the prospective members of the nation and to demonstrate that they

are really part of the national history, pictures of these ruins or monuments

accompanied with the descriptive and informative notes below are incorporated

into the national history books. Besides, these sites are advertised as spots to be

visited by the people as spare time activity that can be added to their vacation

plans, and trips to these spots are organized for the students. As well as books,

catalogues, magazines and school trips, establishment of museums could be

regarded as another useful device. Archeology gave way to the appearance of

museums as an instrument to remind the populace of the common values and

myths in which “living memory is condensed” (Whelan 97). The reason why

states have built many museums investing a huge amount of money is expounded

17

by Anderson who asserts that “museums, and museumizing imagination, are both

profoundly political” (178). That is, museums are a device exploited to

disseminate to the public what archeology unveiled and what historical “facts” it

invented about the national history.

To exemplify specifically the mission archeology is expected to accomplish,

while delineating the strategy utilized by the colonized states to tether their

people to the emerging national culture, Anderson presents the ensuing example:

Monumental archeology, increasingly linked to tourism, allowed the state

appear as guardian of a generalized, but also local, Tradition. The old

sacred sites were to be incorporated into the map of the colony, and their

ancient prestige (which, if this had disappeared, as it often had, the state

would attempt to revive) draped around the mappers. (182)

The previously-colonized state has to implement particular policies so as to

(re)generate the unity fastening the people to each other. One of these is to

awaken the masses to the existence of a tradition that is collectively shared by

them and for that purpose, the “ancient prestige” of the monuments is revivified.

They are made aware of this prestige by either reading about them or

perambulating in these monumental places. Smith, too, provides an example for

the exploitation of archeology or specifically the historical sites in strengthening

nationality from a European context:

[T]he historical events and monuments of the homeland can be

‘naturalized’. Castles, temples, tells and dolmens are integrated into the

landscape and treated as part of its special nature. In the eighteenth and

nineteenth centuries Stonehenge became a ‘natural’ symbol of British

antiquity, as part of the romantic revival of history. Indeed, so much part

of the ‘British’ (Briton) landscape did it become, that it became difficult

to imagine that it was not natural and inherent in the British ethnic

character, as much part of its original nature as the Wessex plains and hills

around. A purely historical monument, of particular time and context, had

become ‘naturalized.’ (66)

The events that happened and the historical sites that were built in the homeland

by the people living there centuries ago were exhibited to the people in such a

way that they are imagined inseparable from the terrain of the nation. This fact

illustrates in a lucid way that historical resurrection can affix to the ethnic

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heritage of this nation some symbols which are independent of the culture of a

nation.

One of the objectives of the attempts at management and organization of the

populations’ memory and imagination is the accentuation of what they (are taught

to) have in common and what they (are taught to) share. The first thing this

organization aims at is related to the unique story of the nation. Poole expounds

on the national story as follows:

Every nation has its own story of triumphs and tragedies, victories and

betrayals. …These stories will celebrate the achievement of those who

performed heroic acts on behalf of the nation and of the nation which

inspired these acts. No doubt the defeat and destruction of enemies will

play a role in these stories; but a larger role is played by death and

suffering. It is as if those who sacrificed themselves on behalf of the

nation have demonstrated in their lives – their deaths – that its worth

transcends other values. Hence, the significance of cenotaphs, tombs of

the unknown soldier, memorial services, and the like. … They [such

projects] continue to invoke the nation as a lived historical reality. (17)

Suffering proves to be more powerful to make people cling to their nation than

the victories. About the role of the shared values in general, Smith avers that:

[National identity and nation] signify bonds of solidarity among members

of communities united by shared memories, myths and traditions that may

or may not find expression in states of their own but are entirely different

from purely legal and bureaucratic ties of state. (15)

Among the national elements, myth is granted a particular significance by the

leading theorists as “national myths have always played an important role in the

formulation of the national identity of any ethnic collectivity and shaping its

national consciousness” (Fahriyev 1). The function of the operation of myths in

nation forming process is that:

It is through myths that ethnic collectivities have expressed the most inner

layers of their identity, it is through myths that the image and perceptions

of an ethnic community have reached their most concentrated, vivid and

crystallized form.” (Fahriyev 1)

19

In the similar vein, Schöpflin contends that “[myth] acts as a means of

standardization and of storage of information. It provides the means for the

members of a community to recognize that broadly they share a mindset, they are

in much the same thought-world” (80). Besides, he draws attention to its function

in delineation of the national identity with inclusion and exclusion:

Through myth boundaries are established within the community and also

with respect to other communities. Those who do not share in the myth

are by definition excluded … Myth is, then, a key element in the creation

of closures and in the construction of collectivities. (80-1)

Therefore, the national myths which are interred in the depths of history should

be disseminated among the members of the nation. Smith also draws our attention

to the repertoires of shared values, symbols and traditions which are made

available to create a social bond between individuals and classes: “By the use of

symbols – flags, coinage, anthem, uniforms, monuments and ceremonies –

members are reminded of their common heritage and cultural kinship and feel

strengthened and exalted by their sense of common identity and belonging” (16-

7). He implies that presenting people with a common ground leads to the

formation of a “collective cultural identity” which,

refers not to a uniformity of elements over generations but to a sense of

continuity on the part of successive generations of a given cultural unit of

population, to shared memories of earlier events and periods in the history

of that unit and to notions entertained by each generation about the

collective destiny of that unit and its culture. (25)

The shared cultural values, memories, heritage and plans for the collective future

should be handed over from one generation of the nation to the ensuing one(s).

Crooke lays emphasis on that point by displaying the linkage between

recollection process and conveyance of the common heritage: “Reminiscence

work, responsibly handled, has been shown to have numerous positive benefits. It

becomes a means to preserve and transmit cultural and community history” (71),

which helps perpetuate the national identity. Smith also highlights that this is

necessary “to reconstitute the notion of collective cultural identity itself in

historical, subjective and symbolic terms” (25). Renan, too, attaches great

20

importance to the recollection and preservation of the shared culture and future,

and asseverates that:

More valuable by far than common customs posts and frontiers … is the

fact of sharing, in the past, a glorious heritage and regrets, and having, in

the future, a programme to put into effect, or the fact of having suffered,

enjoyed and hoped together. (19)

The other cardinal component in constructing a national identity and a nation is

education orchestrated by the state. The memoires that the citizens are to forget

and remember are organized by archeology; that is, certain things are deliberately

neglected or their stories are modified for the purposes of nation building process,

and specific memoires are strongly buttressed in the public imagination. For this

purpose education, especially secular education, too, proves to be quite useful.

The common memories, myths, values and traditions are transmitted to the

prospective members of the nation through a unitary educational system. Smith

expounds on the necessity of what is collectively shared and lays a great

emphasis on the vitality and responsibility of education in its conveyance to the

masses as follows:

Nations must have a measure of common culture and a civic ideology, a

set of common understandings and aspirations, sentiments and ideas that

bind the population together in their homeland. The task of ensuring a

common public, mass culture has been handed over to the agencies of

popular socialization, notably the public system of education and the mass

media. (11)

Common values and aims act as glue sticking every individual member of the

nation to each other, and the enduring continuation of this unity can be secured

by their survival as cultural elements. The maintenance of these elements is

completely dependent upon educating not only the young but also the old

members of the nation through educational systems which are closely monitored

by the state officials. In such a context, Smith depicts how education is exploited

for socialization and citizenship periods by the state:

National identities also fulfill more intimate, internal functions for

individuals in communities. The most obvious is the socialization of the

members as ‘nationals’ and ‘citizens’. Today this is achieved through

21

compulsory, standardized, public mass education systems, through which

state authorities hope to inculcate national devotion and a distinctive,

homogenous culture, an activity that most regimes pursue with

considerable energy under the influence of nationalist ideals of cultural

authenticity and unity. (16)

Primary education is compulsory and free for every citizen. The curriculum for

each grade is arranged and systematized depending on the criteria and content by

the specialists selected and employed by the state, and implementation of this

teaching program is supervised by state officials. Thus, a standardized education

in every part of the country and for all the citizens is guaranteed. Through this

policy, the youth of the society adopt the national identity desired by the regime

and are inculcated to consider themselves as “nationals” and “citizens.” What is

more, such an identity building process leads to homogeneity in culture and

society and devoted nationals, and to a facile administration of the masses by the

state. Smith summarizes this point when he counts what elements are needed for

the formation of a nation. He concludes that “[nations] require a single ‘political

culture’ and public, mass education and media system, so socialize future

generations to be ‘citizens’ of the new nation” (69). Anderson, too, regards

education organized and administered by the state regulations as a prominent

contributor to the imagination of nation. He affirms what Smith has contended:

“In the ‘nation building’ policies of the new states one sees both a genuine,

popular nationalist enthusiasm, and a systematic … instilling of nationalist

ideology through the mass media, the educational system, administrative

regulations, and so forth” (163).

The reason why national values, myths, traditions and customs need to be

reinforced, why people are made to forget certain historical events and sites and

to recollect some others, why the state has to put standardized education systems

into effect and why a new kind of collectivity or a bondage to bind people

together was urgently needed can be found in the revolutions that had an

immense impact on the Occident’s socio-cultural, political and economic

structure. Smith notes three revolutions having altered the thought systems in the

West: “Administrative, economic and cultural” (61). While presenting a detailed

portrayal of the last one, he names it “cultural and educational” (60) and explains

22

that “its center was the decline of ecclesiastical authority in the wake of

reforming movements in the Church and the wars of the Reformation” (60).

Reformation and then Enlightenment have led to weakening of Christianity as an

authority in the formation of countries: “The concept [of nation] was born in an

age in which Enlightenment and Revolution were destroying the legitimacy of the

divinely-ordained, hierarchical dynastic realm” (Anderson 7). Smith refers to

what occurred as a consequence: “This [destruction] in turn allowed the

development of secular studies, notably classical humanism and science, of

university learning, and ultimately of popular modes of communication – novels,

plays and journals” (60). McCall’s explication makes this point more manifest:

“The battle between religion and secularism for influence over ethnic identity

signified the beginning of the modern era. Up until then the spiritual and social

aspects of religion had been crucial to the survival of ethnic identity” (20).

Modernity marks the cessation of the impact that religious phenomena had upon

the social and political zones. Then, a secular basis where masses would agree to

gather or would be easily convinced to settle should be created or imagined, and

this ground should turn into a mighty agent to surrogate the religious thought and

procure the supremacy it had percolated in every domain of life for eons. Thus,

one of the rationales behind the forgetting / remembering (reminding) process

and the instruments employed for this end is the construction of the ground in

question.

Anderson vividly explicates the process of supplanting religious culture with

national culture in his book, but he does not advocate the idea that the religious

thinking should be thoroughly eradicated from the cultural plane of the nation-

state. He contends that the ecclesiastical culture should desist from being

positioned at the peak of the national priority ranking and this point should be

occupied by national culture. Brennan summarizes his claim that the “dawn of

nationalism at the end of the eighteenth century coincide[d] with the dusk of

religion modes of thought” (50). Then, he clarifies the nature of this coincidence:

“Nationalism largely extended and modernized ‘religious imaginings’, taking on

religion’s concern with death, continuity, and the desire for origins” (50).

Anderson makes a historical analysis concerning the declivity of religion-based

23

thinking and the acclivity of the concept of nation in detail, and asserts that three

“fundamental cultural conceptions, all of great antiquity,” whose diffusion in the

society had secured the existence of religion as an absolute authority, “lost their

axiomatic grip on men’s mind” (36). Initially, he mentions:

The idea that a particular script-language offered privileged access to

ontological truth, precisely because it was an inseparable part of that truth

[and] that called into being the great transcontinental solidarities of

Christendom, the Islamic Ummah, and the rest. (36)

The following idea that grew weaker “was the belief that society was naturally

organized around and under high centers- monarchs who were persons apart from

other human beings and who ruled by some form of cosmological (divine)

dispensation” (36). The last one “was a conception of temporality in which

cosmology and history were indistinguishable, the origins of the world and of

men essentially identical” (36). Then, Anderson recapitulates the consequence

these beliefs instigated in human lives: “Combined, these ideas rooted human

lives firmly in the very nature of things, giving certain meaning to the everyday

fatalities of existence (above all death, loss and servitude) and offering, in various

ways, redemption from them” (36). Following that summary, he elucidates how

the regression in the effectiveness of these notions resulted in:

The slow, uneven decline of these interlinked certainties, first in Western

Europe, later elsewhere, under the impact of economic change,

‘discoveries’ (social and scientific), and the development of increasingly

rapid communications, drove a harsh wedge between cosmology and

history. No surprise then that the search was on, so to speak, for a new

way of linking fraternity, power and time meaningfully together. (36)

Religion’s access to the agency of binding people had been occluded, and a

modern idea had to be sought to fill in the vacant position left by the

ecclesiastical authority in men’s minds, and this was evidently nation. In order to

add force to his contention, Anderson chooses to furnish his reader with a specific

example of how conception of nationality enveloping the West changed the

political and social façade of Switzerland:

24

It is instructive that as late as 1848, almost two generations after the Swiss

state came into being, ancient religious cleavages were much more

politically salient than linguistic ones. Remarkably enough, in territories

unalterably-denoted Catholic Protestantism was unlawful, and in those so-

denoted Protestant Catholicism was illegal; and these laws were strictly

enforced. (Language was a matter of choice and convenience). Only after

1848, in the backwash of Europe-wide revolutionary upheavals and the

general spread of vernacularizing national movements, did language take

religion’s place, and country become segmented into unalterably-denoted

linguistic zones. (Religion now became a matter of personal choice.) (138)

Language, as an element of national identity, penetrated into the politics of Swiss

state by overriding the previously-paramount status of religion. Utterly analogous

with the view Anderson puts forward, Brennan maintains that “in a sense

nationalist doctrine takes over religion’s social role, substituting for the imperial

church” (59). Besides, Brennan holds Kohn’s asseveration about how and what

aspects nation borrowed from religion:

In its European origins, nationalism was also messianic, modeled on

patterns of Judeo-Christianity. According to Kohn, modern nationalism

took three concepts from Old Testament mythology: the idea of a chosen

people, the emphasis on a common stock of memory of the past and hopes

for the future, and finally national messianism. (59)

Like every historical fact, nation, as a “novel” way of binding populations, was

not able to depart from the fundamental notions of its predecessor, religion. In

other words, nation used a model familiar to the populations rather than

implementing a totally new design for the society as the modeled one had proved

its functionality, but expired. However, McCall cautions against the probable

assumption that this supplantation could take place in all the ethnic groups

regardless of the specific variables they possess by making a summary of the

categorization of ethnic groups by Smith:

‘Lateral’ ethnic communities, that is communities which were socially

stratified by class and had an aristocracy with links to counterparts in

other territories, were equal to the challenge that this revolution brought.

… In contrast to successful ‘lateral’ ethnic communities, ‘vertical’ ethnic

communities had an ethnicity that was pervasive throughout the

population; they were ruled by others; and the centrality of religion in

communal life proved to be more difficult to supplant. As a consequence,

vertical ethnic groups were initially unable to rise to the challenge of

25

modernization and reap the benefits of the modern revolutions … the

transformation of ‘vertical’ ethnic groups to nations was curtailed by the

pre-eminence of religion in such societies. (21-2)

Supersedence of religious authority with a secular one is not possible in every

society. That is, there are certain ethnic communities which are unable to become

a nation since they are still entrapped in the acute control of religious traditions

permeating in every sphere of the society in a crystallized form.

While replacing the ecclesiastical authority that defined each member of its

community, nation had to describe a mode of devotion through which its

members could find a meaningful bond to tie themselves to the nation and thus to

the state. This bond turned out to be “citizenship [which] is used not simply to

underline membership of the nation and differentiate ‘us’ from ‘them’ but even

more to outbid the claims of competing allegiances and identities, notably ethnic

ones” (Smith 118). Along with ethnic identities, religious identities were

considered to be one of the most crucial “competing allegiances and identities.”

In order to accentuate the function of this new form of membership, Smith notes

that “legal citizenship carries strong moral and economic overtones, becoming

the main device for exclusion but also the chief agency of inclusion and benefits

(in jobs, education, health care, etc.), irrespective of ethnic origins” (118) and

religious faith can be put in the same group in this respect. Assigning every

member of the nation with citizenship could, albeit ostensibly, wipe out the

hierarchical system religion reflected on political and social institutions. Tambini

highlights how national status took the place of the previously dominating forces,

and notes that:

[T]he new national status gradually replaced kinship, town, guild or

gender as the main determinant of access to resources, rights and to the

institutions of political participation. According to the national model, the

rights and obligations of citizens, and the practices of participation in a

polity, have been open to all those with a particular status, defined as

being part of a ‘nation’, and only to those. (196)

In the similar vein, Smith emphasizes this fact by noting that “if ethnic cleavages

[religious ones can be attached] are to be eroded in the longer term, it is argued,

26

this can be done only by a pronounced emphasis on inculcating social mores in a

spirit of civic equality and fraternity” (119). The same theorist opines about this

transformation that Western societies had undergone:

Beneath the different responses to westernization lies the imperative of a

moral and political revolution, one which requires the people to be

purified from the accretions of centuries, so that they can be emancipated

into a political community of equal citizens. (64)

To indicate the significance of the citizenship for this political community and the

link between the national identity and citizenship, Hill and Kwen Fee note

Bowles and Gintis’s argument that:

The development of citizenship as a key force in stabilizing and

legitimizing the nineteenth-century nation state required the securing of a

sense of national identity and this was achieved through “providing

ceremonies, and mass-producing public monuments. (38)

There exists a strong interdependence between the national identity and

citizenship, which is put to use in the process of inventing the nation.

Regarding the citizenship’s contribution to the nation formation, Smith

enumerates some “interrelated processes” one of which is “a movement to turn

ethnic members into legal ‘citizens’ by conferring civil, social and political rights

on them” (65). Besides, the “subscription” process of this new membership, that

is, how members will be able to become aware of their citizenship, is also

illustrated in his book. Smith labels the course of education that is organized to

imprint national identity and citizenship on the people’s minds as “civic

education [which] is potentially the most significant feature of territorial

nationalism and the identity it seeks to create” (118). Then, he presents a

depiction of that education:

[O]bservers often remark on the seriousness with which the regimes of

new states embark on campaigns for literacy and primary education of the

whole population and, sometimes, for (some) secondary education.

Equally important is the content of that education … There is far greater

emphasis on the service to the community that the individual can provide,

and the debt that he or she incurs, even if this is conveyed indirectly by

social approval rather than by indoctrination. (118)

27

On the route of constructing a nation, new states have to establish certain

educational systems so that they can indirectly teach their members the services

they are to supply for their nation. That shows a reciprocal interdependence

between the members and the nation or citizens and the state. As nation calls for

its members to forge it, people are in burning need to bind themselves to a

collectivity. Besides, entirely disparate from the religion-shaped communities,

inculcation of these duties is performed with social approval instead of

indoctrination.

In addition, the bilateral relationship between nation and the state deserves

attention in order to grasp the attributes of the three concepts: nation, nation

forming and national identity. Concerning this link, Anderson notes that “nation-

ness is virtually inseparable from political consciousness” (135). Besides, while

depicting the imagination of nation as a sovereign agent, he puts forward that

“nations dream of being free … The gage and emblem of this freedom is the

sovereign state” (7). Supporting Anderson’s idea, Barker suggests that

“historically the state precedes the nation. It is not nations which make states; it is

states which make nations” (15). In this assertion, it is also implied that nation

and the state are two distinct entities, and Rejai and Enloe clarifies this distinction

by noting that “‘state’ … is primarily a political-legal concept, whereas ‘nation’

is primarily psycho-cultural. Nation and state may exist independently of one

another, a nation may exist without a state, a state may exist without a nation”

(143). However, Poole’s comparison of nation with other collectivities in terms

of forming a state is largely paramount: “It is the nation – not religion, political

principle, local community, or social class – which demands its own state” (15-

6).

Concerning what sort of affiliation coalesces the nation and the state, after

defining nation “as a named human population sharing a historic territory,

common myths and historical memories, a mass, public culture, a common

economy and common legal rights and duties for all members” (14) Smith

provides a comparison between nation and the state:

28

The latter refers exclusively to public institutions, differentiated from, and

autonomous of, other social institutions and exercising a monopoly of

coercion and extraction within a given territory. The nation, on the other

hand, signifies a cultural and political bond, uniting in a single political

community all who share an historic culture and homeland. (14-5)

There is a disparity in terms of the fields where they function and the missions

they are expected to accomplish. Yet, Smith clarifies his claim by articulating that

“this is not to deny some overlap between the two concepts, given their common

reference to a historic territory and (in demotic states) their appeal to the

sovereignty of the people” (14-5). Gellner, who designates the state to be

“nation’s shell” (143), also elucidates the inseparability of nation from the state

as follows:

In fact, nations, like states, are a contingency, and not a universal

necessity. Neither nations nor states exist at all times and in all

circumstances. Moreover, nations and states are not the same contingency.

Nationalism holds that they were destined for each other; that either

without the other is incomplete, and constitutes a tragedy. (6)

However, in the following lines Gellner states that each concept emerged free of

one another and then they got affiliated, and he adds that “the state has certainly

emerged without the help of the nation. Some nations have certainly emerged

without the blessings of their own state” (6). At the stage of their constitution, the

creation of one of these phenomena does not entail the pre-existence of the other.

In addition, as for the influence each has on the other, Smith depicts how the

dissemination of national identity strengthens the position the state has. He argues

that “politically … national identity underpins the state and its organs, or their

pre-political equivalent in nations that lack their own states” (16). Then, he

mentions a more specific support nation supplies for the state:

But perhaps the salient political function of national identity is its

legitimation of common legal rights and duties of legal institutions, which

define the peculiar values and character of the nation and reflect the age-

old customs and mores of the people. The appeal to national identity has

become the main legitimation for social order and solidarity today. (16)

29

Continuation of a state requires the existence of a national identity for its citizens

in order that it can convince the masses to approve the legitimacy of the laws that

they have to abide by. This precludes the option of the people’s discernment of

the violence whose monopoly state possesses according to Max Weber. Also,

thanks to the bondage nation constructed among the populace, any sort of

possible conflict between people is effortlessly thwarted, which assists the state to

govern these masses in a trouble-free style. To exemplify how the concept of

nation contributes to the state, Smith avers that England, France, Spain, Holland

and Sweden have deeply affected the way how nations are shaped in the

nineteenth and twentieth centuries and that “their national format was

increasingly regarded as a key to their success” (60). At this point, also the

question of how the state contributes to the formation of nation is attempted to

answer by Smith. He notes that “indeed many would argue that … the state

actually ‘created’ the nation, [and] that its activities of taxation, conscription and

administration endowed the population within its jurisdiction with a sense of their

corporate identity and civic loyalty” (60). Having admitted that the state emerged

as the requisite circumstance for the development of national devotion, Smith

stresses as follows:

The extension of citizenship rights and the build-up of an infrastructure

that linked distant parts of the realm and vastly increased the density of

communication networks with the state borders drew more and more areas

and classes into the national political arena and created the images of

national community. (60)

However, then he concludes responding this question that by alleging that the

state will be too straightforward and that “[the state] did so in conjunction with

(and in the context of) other processes” (60).

The other component conducing to the composition of national identity is the

existence of a common territory or homeland. Among the theorists having written

articles about how nation is moulded, Smith is the one who opted to emphatically

asseverate that a common territory or a homeland is one of the essential building

blocks of a nation. He commences his contention by declaring that national

identity inescapably encloses a feeble sense of political community which

30

attributes to a certain social space, a well defined and well drawn terrain. The

members are to identify with this social and territorial locus and feel themselves

in a state of belonging to it. Smith clarifies his claim with a concise statement:

“People and territory must belong to each other” (9). In order to expound on the

affiliation between territory and nation and what characteristics a national terrain

should hold, he expresses:

It [territory] is, and must be, the ‘historic’ land, the ‘homeland’, the

‘cradle’ of our people, even where, as with the Turks, it is not the land of

ultimate origin. A historic land is one where terrain and people have

exerted mutual, and beneficial, influence over several generations. The

homeland becomes a repository of historic memories and associations, the

place where ‘our’ sages, saints and heroes lived, worked, prayed and

fought. All this makes the homeland unique. (9)

All the joyful and sorrowful events that occurred and experiences people have

gone through throughout history were imprinted solely on their national territory

so that they can be perused by the following generations. Thus, “nations are

inconceivable without some common myths and memories of a territorial home”

(Smith 40). Guntram Herb, another authority who emphasizes the reliance of

national identity upon territorial identification, betokens that “national identity is

dependent on territory because only territory provides tangible evidence of the

nation’s existence and its historical roots, and a nation needs a clearly demarcated

national territory to demand its own state” (10). Besides, Herb draws attention to

the fact that narrating a territory is a determining factor for nation formation:

Nationalists have long used images of place to link people to the land. …

Over time, as a group occupies and narrates a particular territory, a

transformation occurs. Instead of the group defining the territory, the

territory comes to define the group. (17)

How the territory selected to be a national one is filled with common values or

how these values are unveiled becomes a manifest dynamic for the perpetuation

of national identity. Oommen also bolsters the notion of the inseparability of the

nation and territory by noting that “the nation is a territorial entity to which the

people have an emotional attachment and in which they invest a moral meaning;

it is homeland – ancestral or adopted” (33). The territory to which the people

31

cling themselves emotionally thanks to the common myths and memories plays a

vital part in the formation of the nation and of course, the construction of a

national identity.

Otherization is another element playing an important role in the nation forming

process. All the other steps in the process of nation forming than othering have

been demonstrated to encompass a stress on the efforts to concentrate on what

nation has or is assumed to have so as to create a feeling of uniqueness among its

members. In the process of forgetting / remembering, the nation is expected to

forget what it is not thought to genuinely own and remember what it is believed

or reckoned to bear for the purpose of yoking all the members. In this way, a

certain corpus of shared common values, myths, traditions and customs prove to

be extant in the national culture. Archeology, museums and various types of

education systems provide assistance in the reinforcement of that corpus. Yet, the

imposition of a sense of uniqueness on the members of nation should also involve

a peculiarly intensive accentuation on the aspects of distinctiveness and

exclusivity. In other words, keeping out what the other nations indicate as the

constituents of their identity embodies as much significance as inclusion of the

maintenance of matchless and collective units of nation. For identities are always

constructed against the difference of an other (Abizadeh 45), and “lineation of an

‘in-group’ must necessarily entail delineation from a number of ‘out-groups’, and

that delineation is an active and ongoing part of identity formation” (Neumann

142). Edward Said emphasizes this point by noting that “culture is a system of

discriminations and evaluations … it also means that culture is a system of

exclusions” (1984: 11). In her article “National Identity and the ‘Other,’” Anna

Triandafyllidou highlights the role of the nation’s othering process in “double-

edged character of national identity:”

The double-edged character of national identity, namely its capacity of

defining who is a member of the community but also who is a foreigner,

compels one to ask to which extent it is a form of inward-looking self-

consciousness of a given community or the extent to which the self-

conception of the nation in its unity, autonomy and uniqueness is

conditioned from outside, namely through defining who is not a national

and through differentiating the in-group from others. (593-4)

32

Acquiring a national identity necessitates drawing the boundaries circumscribing

the nation and thus outlining not only the interior but also the exterior zones. In

other words, the questions “who are we? and who are they?” should be plainly

replied. Furthermore, Seton-Watson makes a definition whose concentration is

considerably upon the creation of a both shared and distinctive ground as a

determining criterion for the nation building process. He articulates that:

[The nation] may be understood as a community of people who share

some sense of solidarity, a national consciousness and a common heritage

through shared memories, distinguishing cultural features such as religion,

customs, language, and an historic territory. (1)

Also, while presenting a theoretical framework to examine the constitution of

national identity in Ukraine, Shulman notes three questions to be answered by the

members or potential members of the nation so that the content of their feelings

of solidarity can be determined. One of them is explicitly related to otherization:

“What features do we have in common that distinguish us from other political

communities?” (1014). Then, he recapitulates his point by stating that “an

identity emerges from the recognition of the commonality among the members of

a nation, and differences between that nation and others” (1014). Moreover, in his

explication regarding the true nature of nation frontiers, Bennington spells out the

significance of a clear definition of what constitutes “outside” and of nation’s

demarcating and differentiating itself from this “outside.” He articulates that “the

frontier does not merely close the nation in on itself, but also immediately, opens

it to an outside, to other nations” (121). To make his point more lucid, he makes

use of Morin’s delineation of the frontier which provides salient points

concerning the need of creating an “other:”

The frontier is both an opening and a closing. It is at the frontier that there

takes place the distinction from and liaison with the environment. All

frontiers, including the membrane of living beings, including the frontiers

of nations, are, at the same time as they are barriers, places of

communication and exchange. They are places of dissociation and

association, of separation and articulation. (121)

As much as the inner coordination of what nation has, it is also necessary to

determine what kind of perception should be reflected on the members as for the

33

other outside(s); to what extent association and communication with external

entities are permitted or restricted, and how internal values are required to be

made distinctive from the other’s values. Then, Bennington wraps up this issue:

At the center, the nation narrates itself the nation: at the borders, it must

recognize that there are other nations on which it cannot but depend. …

The ‘origin’ of the nation is never simple, but dependent on a

differentiation of nations which has always already begun. The story of

(the institution of) nation will be irremediably complicated by this

situation. (122)

The narration of the nation is a dual way process: controlling the internal

dynamics and becoming cognizant of representation of the other as an external

factor. This ascribes to the fact “that collective imagination depends on a

dialectical opposition to another identity [and that] the ontology of otherness

becomes the necessary basis of social imagination” (Göl 121).

In the light of the three concepts discussed above, the problems regarding the

national identity in Northern Ireland could be discussed in this section of the

study. To commence with, because of the profound cleavage between the two

groups in this country, the forgetting / remembering (reminding) process is

utilized just to enlarge the intercommunal chasm by intensely reminding the

members of each community what sort of disparities they hold in terms of

cultural and religious characteristics and becoming oblivious of what they have

been sharing for centuries. In other words, “who owns and is responsible for the

collective past and what is deliberately forgotten, what recalled” (Said 2003: 180)

have been determined in such a manner that intensified differences are kept

always fresh in the minds of people, whereas what they have common is urged to

be veiled. This process is formulated with the help of the narration of stories and

myths to the new members, the commemoration activities, and education

systems. Secondly, the religious culture in Northern Ireland has been crystallized

so clearly and it has become such a mighty actor in the social and political

environment that it is practically improbable to supersede it with a national

culture. In other words, the adherence to the religious creeds occupies in a

cardinal point in every sphere of life and its position is still being reinforced by

34

social and political factors, so creation of a national culture to surrogate it seems

too burdensome to accomplish. Another matter of contention is that the state does

not have any policies so as to build a nation and national identity in its people’s

imagination. That is, the government which is predominated by the unionist

ideology in Ulster does not have the tendency to prepare and implement an all-

inclusive national project which will facilitate the effacement of the civil

disturbance in that country. It has been entangled in the unionist plans

orchestrated by the UK.

One major problem that is stimulated by the issues stated above is the want of

national identity solely possessed by and unique for the people in Northern

Ireland. That is, both nationalists and unionists are incapable of having a stable

national identity and they are in a Limbo position in terms of a national identity.

The unionist Protestants claim to be British, but it is impossible for them under

the conditions which they are destined to endure in the northeast of Ireland to be

able to attain the same Britishness as the people in England. Claire Mitchell

clarifies this point as follows:

The evolving meanings of Britishness and of Protestant identifications are

widely variable. This is because Protestants in Northern Ireland do not

necessarily share the same social world. Differing experiences,

perceptions of power, social relationships – and choices based on these –

have differing consequences for identification. A negative assessment of

others and of place can lead to a sense of alienation. (2003: 627)

In a similar vein, Miller argues that “unionists have never developed a nationalist

ideology, the most powerful form of metanarrative linking social groups and

territory. Rather, they preferred a prenationalist contractarian discourse, defined

by allegiance to a British crown” (qtd. in Graham 130). However, this discourse

cannot secure a socially and psychologically peaceful atmosphere for the

Protestant community since,

if in the south the Protestant community was stretched, living with the

endemic fear of being overrun by Catholic irredentism, in the north, many

areas had Protestant pluralities which did not fear local Catholics but

nevertheless dreaded the prospect of a popish-dominated government

from Dublin. (O’Day 4)

35

They inevitably feel entrapped even in the state where they hold the political and

demographical majority in their hands. An analogous elucidation can be

appropriate for the nationalist Catholics who name themselves Irish since what

means Irishness in Southern Ireland and in Northern Ireland are totally divergent

due to the social dissimilarities in two countries. Having been separated from

their co-religionists with the partition in 1921, “[Northern Catholics] remained a

reluctant minority within the ‘state-nation,’ … [and] they already had some of the

characteristics of a dispersed national minority existing within a territory

controlled both economically and demographically by others” (O’Day 14). In

other words, “the northern Irish nationalists who subsequently found themselves

on the wrong side of partition experienced feelings of dispossession and

resentment at being cast adrift structurally from the rest of the Irish nation”

(O’Tuathaigh 73). Once the conditions of the two groups are closely deliberated,

the Protestants in Northern Ireland do not / cannot choose Irishness as a national

identity as the Irishness has been monopolized by Catholicism, and cannot adopt

the Britishness as a national identity owing to the varieties in the social factors

they are exposed to. Similarly, the Catholics in Northern Ireland do not call

themselves British because their Catholicism entails an Irish identity by rejecting

the British rule, and they cannot truly entitle themselves Irish owing to the

disparities of social conditions. Besides, Fanon’s conclusion concerning the

comparison between African Negroes and American Negroes corroborates what

is asserted at this point about the Catholics and the Protestants:

During the first congress of the African Cultural Society which was held

in Paris in 1956, the American Negroes of their own accord considered

their problems from the same standpoint as those of their African brothers

… But little by little [they] realized that the essential problems

confronting them were not the same as those that confronted the African

Negroes. The Negroes of Chicago only resemble the Nigerians or the

Tanganykans in so far as they were all defined in relation to the whites.

But once the first comparisons had been made and subjective feelings

were assuaged, the American Negroes realized that the objective problems

were fundamentally heterogeneous … Thus, during the second congress

of the African Cultural Society the American Negroes decided to create an

American society for people of black cultures. (174)

36

The populace in Northern Ireland is blind to the “fundamental heterogeneity of

the objective problems” which the American Negroes discerned. They are

embroiled in an illusion giving them a sense of belonging to a nation which in

reality they do not fit in. That is why, in terms of national identity, they are

actually endeavoring to survive on a slippery ground. This situation compels

them to fasten themselves to their communal identity determined by their

religious credo since only through this tie are the Catholics able to feel

themselves Irish and the Protestant population British. Hence, the civil strife is

maintained because of the fact that both groups are reluctant to give a halt to the

conflictual circumstances which strongly underpin their communal identities.

37

CHAPTER II

THE RELUCTANCE TO DESIST THE CONFLICTUAL SITUATION IN

NORTHERN IRELAND IN “TEA IN A CHINA CUP,” “DID YOU HEAR

THE ONE ABOUT THE IRISHMAN … ?,” “JOYRIDERS,” “THE BELLE

OF THE BELFAST CITY,” AND “MY NAME, SHALL I TELL YOU MY

NAME?”

Christina Reid, one of the renowned figures of Troubles Play in Northern Ireland,

has got a tremendous repertoire of the violent incidents caused by the social and

political environment during the Troubles in this country from 1970s to 1998

when The Good Friday Agreement was believed to end them. The playwright

owes her repertoire to her family background as her family adopted a highly

intense adherence to the loyalist ideology. However, like her protagonists, she

renounced this ideology as the major determiner of her life, and thus she

enunciated that she considers herself an Irish rather than a British. Her political

stance urged her to present the vivid portrayal of these incidents which

significantly marked her life. In other words, she has put down her plays in black

and white particularly to make the theatergoers concentrate on how the

“Troubles” have framed and exacerbated the existing social disturbance on the

island of Ireland for centuries. Her distinguished plays which deal with the

Troubles are: “Tea in a China Cup,” “Did You Hear the One About the Irishman

… ?,” “Joyriders,” “The Belle of the Belfast City” and “My Name, Shall I Tell

You My Name?” In these plays, Reid chooses as the focal point the topics

concerning the national identity problem which dates back to the initial

annexation and appropriation of the island by the English soldiers. As the

particular time span, she selects the second half of the twentieth century which

hosts her personal experiences or the experiences narrated to her by her family

members. She draws attention to several issues regarding this identity problem,

yet the one which is much more accentuated than others is the reluctance of the

38

people from both the Protestant and the Catholic factions to give a halt to the civil

strife that they have been undergoing during the period not only till but also

following the partition in 1921 implemented by the United Kingdom. Beneath

this reluctance there are several reasons, but the playwright aims at putting the

stress on three issues: First, the conflict needs to be maintained since, thanks to

the infuriated and fierce struggle between the nationalist minority and the

unionist majority in Northern Ireland, they can buttress directly their communal

identity (Protestant vs. Catholic) and indirectly their national identity (British vs.

Irish) closely linked with the former by sticking a lot more tightly to their

traditions, values and in general what they possess in common. Next, their

identity is underpinned by the help of the reinforcement of the otherization

process that conflictual atmosphere provides. Finally, Reid demonstrates how

menaced those devoting all they have to the communal identity structure

organizing or segregating the society feel when they encounter young family

members diverting away from their traditions.

2.1 Adherence to the Existing Values of the Community

Under the harsh conditions of a division between the communities and a probable

civil disturbance this division might bring about, both communities are afflicted

with the ineluctable trepidation of being engulfed or overrun by the opposing

group. Therefore, the more acute the demarcation becomes and the broader the

dividing line grows, the more ardent the devotees of the two factions get and the

more they attach themselves to the existing values each community has

constructed for its members. That is, along with the increment in group solidarity,

they feel themselves obliged to adopt the proclivity to highlight the so called

uniqueness of their group and thus to foster their communal identity. Hence, the

presence of a divisional social structure is actually what these groups long for.

The conflictual situation in Northern Ireland does not embrace any dissimilar

dynamics, and in her plays, Reid puts the stress on how the divide in Ulster is

desired since its existence reinforces the uniqueness of both opposing groups.

In “Tea in a China Cup,” various experiences which three generations of women,

the Grandmother (Sarah’s mother), Sarah (Beth’s mother) and Beth, go through

39

in a working-class Belfast Protestant family are portrayed vividly. Stories of these

three generations are connected with Beth, who could recount even the stories

that happened prior to her birth because she was told these stories so many times

that she knows them as if she herself has lived them. Beth has suffered from the

traditions which have been endowed upon her by the Grandmother, Great Aunt

Massie and her mother, Sarah. She has been brought up with incessant references

to the so-called respectability and gentility of her family and the essential

differences from the Catholics (with the help of certain myths, stories and biases).

In this play, it is evident that the sectarian divide in Northern Ireland pushes the

Protestant family to firmly stick to their traditional values, which reinforces their

identity, and hence, termination of the clash is not the desired outcome.

To commence with, in the stage directions at the outset of the play, Reid aims at

displaying the audience that though Sarah who is in mid-fifties in 1972 (the year

when the Troubles reached its peak in terms of violence) is obviously very ill, she

does not stop enthusiastically listening to and watching the Orange Bands

practicing for the parade on the twelfth of July. Orange Bands start practicing in

the streets several weeks before the actual parade and each rehearsal can attract

the Protestant population’s attention nearly as much as the actual performance.

Since she cannot watch them in the streets and sing the particular Protestant

songs with them due to her sickness, she sits next to the window and tries to take

the pleasure of the parade. This pleasure is indeed about the sense of belonging

and solidarity which proves to be a sort of reinforcement for her protestant

identity. This parade is unique for the protestant community: The music and the

singing are peculiar to the unionist faction and have become one of their cultural

values, and existence of civil strife between the two groups in Ulster triggers their

enthusiasm for it.

Furthermore, when Beth comes back home from the council office where she

went to buy a plot for her mother (upon her request) who has been suffering from

cancer and is terminally ill, she finds her mother lying on the sofa and gets angry

with her: “You promised to stay in bed till I got back” (8). When Sarah explains

that she has got out of her bed to listen to and watch the practices of the parade,

40

Beth’s response is: “You’ve exhausted yourself, your face is all flushed” (8).

Sarah’s reply can be considered as an example of what kind of influence the

practice of these Orange Bands has upon the Protestant populace:

It’s the sound of the flute bands … always get the oul Protestant blood

going. I tell you, a daily dose of the True Blue Defenders would do me

more good than them hateful transfusions they give me at the hospital …

how long is it now till the twelfth? (8)

Human beings, as identity seeking animals, prioritize the possession of identity,

and what conduces to their identity is of substantial importance for their existence

in the world. Therefore, when Sarah is exposed to what solely belongs to

Protestant conventions, she feels that it contributes to her health more than the

treatment she gets at the hospital. The clash between the Protestant and the

Catholic factions she has witnessed all her life has moulded her collective identity

and now even when she is about to abandon this world, she feels a sort of

bondage to her communal values.

As another example of how significant the parade has been for Sarah and how she

has never minded the difficulties to participate in it, she reminds her daughter of

the day when she took Beth, who was only a few months old, to the Field at

Finaghy, and then she asks her daughter to take her to the end of the driveway in

the car to be able to participate in it for the last time:

SARAH: You know, if I’m well enough on the twelfth of July, we will go

to the Field, you and me. I’d like to stand there with you beside me, one

more time, just like when you were a child. I carried you to the Field at

Finaghy when you were a few months old, do you know that? (10)

She craves to feel her bondage once more to the values upon which she has based

her social identity throughout her life. Then, Beth, who has been told all the

family stories by her mother since her childhood, delineates the tableau on this

day without ignoring any detail in her narration, and she has been instructed to

lay extra stress on the moment when an upper-class Orangeman told her mother

that “I’m proud of you daughter coming all this way with a young baby. Women

like you are the backbone of Ulster” (10). Therefore, why Sarah insists on being

41

at the Field to watch the parade and why she particularly reminds Beth of this

very story are closely connected. She implies that she feels obliged to be a part of

this festive occasion though she suffers from cancer. She yearns for being there to

feel the atmosphere in this difficult situation as she has done before despite the

hardships.

As one more point regarding the Orange Bands, their extraordinarily prolonged

period of practicing prior to the actual occasion is commented upon by Sarah and

Beth from different perspectives, which in fact exhibits their varying degree of

attachment to Protestant principles:

SARAH: Only five more days till the twelfth.

BERTH: If they have any more practice runs, they’ll be worn out before

the actual event.

SARAH: Not at all. They get better every day. (32)

Sarah does not fail to remember the exact time left for the parade. In a way,

twelfth of July is her temporal reference point. She minds the number of the days

before it is twelfth rather than what day of the month it is. Besides, once Beth

refers to the Bands’ excessive practice period, she says that the more practice

they make, the better they become day by day. From Sarah’s statement, it can be

inferred that the more they continue practicing the parade, the more intensely

Protestant they feel; and that the more the people from Protestant group could

participate in this procession, their vital conventional ritual display, the more they

could promote their sense of belonging to the community and the solidarity

amongst its members.

As the last issue that should be highlighted about the attachment of the people to

their communal traditions which is maintained owing to the sectarian divide in

Northern Ireland, drinking tea in a china cup is a ceremony-like phenomenon for

the Protestant family in the play. They perceive that traditions gather them

together so they are indispensible for their family life. Massie emphasizes this by

remarking that “there is nothin’ like a drop of tea in a china cup …” The pleasure

they get out of sipping tea in a china cup is unique to them and no other pleasure

can replace it. Also, the fact that they attach such significance to this custom has

42

something to do with their loyalist identity. While teaching Beth the

respectability and gentility that the Protestant community has, the Grandmother

puts the emphasis on china set, too: “No matter how poor we are, child, we work

hard and keep ourselves and our homes clean and respectable, and we always

have a bit of fine bone china and good linen table by us” (25). These two pieces

of materials they never fail to possess evince how much they hanker to keep their

bond with the British identity as Massie implies that “if the new Queen herself,

God bless her, was to call here for her tea, we could do her proud” (25). They are

obliged to have these two pieces in their houses for two reasons: Their presence

allows them to maintain the similarity they feel between a respectable British

family and a Protestant family; and as a loyalist family, they think that they have

to be worthy of any visit by any member of the British royal family. In other

words, these possessions grant them a feeling (albeit self-delusional) that they are

considered to be a part of the British national identity.

In “The Belle of the Belfast City,” Dolly, a seventy-seven-year-old grandmother

who strives to keep her split family together has lost her husband but never puts

him out of her mind. The image of Belfast that she constructs in her songs proves

to oppose the one imagined by her nephew Jack, a loyalist politician. Through the

discussions and disputes Dolly’s two daughters, Rose and Vi and Jack involve,

the playwright reveals the traditions and loyalties which govern the behavior of

the city’s fiercely Protestant working classes. The demonstration held by the

Loyalists to protest the Anglo-Irish Agreement on its first anniversary gives clues

about the social and political background of the events and disputes in the play.

Against such a background, the play includes several examples about the way the

sectarian conflict leads to.

Initially, how the Protestant group clings to its values in the face of the conflict is

evident in the song Jack and Vi sing when he visits her to tell that a friend of his

is interested in buying their house. They used to sing this song when they were

kids and they can still remember it:

VI (sings)

But Bob the deceiver, he took us all in

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And married a Papish called Brigid McGinn

Turned Papish himself and forsook the oul cause

That gave us our freedom, religion and laws

JACK (sings)

Now the boys in the townland made comment upon it

And Bob had to flee to the province of Connaught

He flew with his wife and his fixin’s boot

And along with the latter the oul Orange Flute. (187)

The song which the children learn by heart is coloured with Orangist ideology.

Through this sort of songs, these children learn their traditions and what they

value in their culture. For example, who is called the deceiver, what values they

have to loathe, and the criteria about who should be excluded from the

community are transmitted through these songs; and the adherence of the

members to their faction is ensured.

The fact that violence fosters one’s loyalty to his or her communal values and

ideology is obvious in the dispute which started and inflamed between Rose and

Vi when Rose accused her elder sister of selling magazines including racist

propaganda and financially supporting the loyalist paramilitaries. Vi puts the

emphasis on the disparity of the conditions which have shaped their lives:

Don’t you lecture me, Rose! It’s all very fine and easy livin’ in London

and makin’ noble decisions about what’s right and what’s wrong about

how we live here. I’m the one who has to live here. You’ve been on your

travels since you were seventeen … Talk’s cheap. And it’s easy to be

brave when you’re somewhere safe to run. (199)

Vi highlights that when one lives in a country divided with conflict, there is no

other choice than becoming a part of it for survival. It is too hard to avoid being

dragged into this mire. One has to make a choice between the two sides, and

sticking to one side provides security. That is, the conflict requires people to

increase their adherence to their community for safety reasons in the “Troubles.”

The conversation between Vi and Rose in the morning of the protest rally points

out that the former continues sticking to the loyalist ideology. Vi begins talking

about her political stance when her sister asks her whether she will open the shop

on this particular day:

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I’m in support of the protest but I’m getting’ out of the corner they’ve

boxed us into … I will never support that agreement, never … I’m British,

an’ that’s what I’ll fight to stay as long as there’s breath in my body. But

I’ll do it respectably and with dignity. I won’t be associated with the

dictates of criminals. (236)

She has to choose a side for herself, and she clings herself to the loyalist part, but

she is resolute to avoid being affiliated with the criminals having the same

ideology. That is, she will not be an extremist in her political thought.

Another character who maintains his adherence to the traditions and the values of

his community is Jack. He feels obliged to keep his loyalty not because of the

conflict in Northern Ireland, but because of the clash between what he has been

strictly taught and the treatment he receives in his aunt’s house due to his ideas.

The issue of statue of the Virgin Mary is one instance of that:

JANET takes the “ornament” out of her pocket. It is a religious statue of

the Virgin Mary.

VI: Mother of God!

DOLLY (aside to VI): She didn’t know what it was, an’ I hadn’t the heart

to tell her she couldn’t have it, she was that taken by it.

VI: Jack’ll go mad.

DOLLY: Ach, he’ll never see it in the girls’ bedroom. (202)

Since she supports neither side of the sectarian divide, she does not mind the fact

that Janet, Jack’s sister, buys the statue during their visit to Dublin. It means

nothing for her: neither faith nor hatred. Besides, on the same journey to Dublin,

they purchased two pound of Haffners sausages which Dolly cooks for Jack’s

Church Brigade Supper though Rose has warned her: “Jack won’t eat anything

that was made in the South of Ireland” (204). She never minds Jack’s abhorrence

for the Catholics and does not fail to make Jack feel this by letting Rose tell Jack

about the sausages after they have finished eating them. He sees Janet playing

with her “pretty lady:”

JACK: What’s that you’ve got?

JANET: She’s my pretty lady. I bought her in Dublin.

JACK grabs the statue. Shouts at Janet.

JACK: That’s no pretty lady. It’s a blasphemous Popish statue. A heathen

45

image of Christ’s mother. Thou shalt not make unyo thee any graven

image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above. (204)

The conflictual environment that Dolly has created in the house strengthens his

bondage to the Protestant credo. Also, it is again Janet who tells him about the

sausages in the same dispute:

JANET: If you hurt her, I’ll tell the Church Brigade about the sausages!

…

JACK: What did you say! What about the sausages?

…

JANET: They were from Dublin. Dolly bought them. It wasn’t me! It

wasn’t me!

JACK: Women! Women! Temptation! Deception! You’re the instrument

of the devil! The root of all evil! (205)

This situation reinforces what he has been taught about the women in his

Protestant church as now he can see a concrete example of the Protestant beliefs

regarding the detestation for women. His bonds to his beliefs are strengthened

once more in the face of conflict. His Protestant belief is fostered in one more

incident: Dolly organizes parties to which she invites only the family members,

her daughters, niece and nephew, on the anniversary of her husband, Joe’s death.

Jack does not think that this way of remembering is appropriate and states that

“we should be thanking God for taking Uncle Joe to heaven and not having a

sinful party” (216). Again when what Dolly does conflicts with what Jack

believes, he does not strip himself off the tie with his religious creed. What is

more, Dolly makes Jack perform a song against his will, which puts Jack into

tears with anger and humiliation for being a laughing stock. All these things

reinforce his adherence to his own values.

In “My Name, Shall I Tell You My Name?” Reid uses the Battle of Somme

during World War I as a strong symbol of loyalist adherence to the Crown. Andy

shows his granddaughter, Andrea, the photo of himself with his friends, “Billy

Boys” in that battle, and he describes them as real men, heroes and Ulster

Protestant Orangemen, and also makes her memorize their names so that she can

remember whenever he refers to those “heroes.” However, when she grows up

and decides to marry a man called Hanif whose father is British and mother a

46

Pakistani, he rages and tells her to get out of his sight and that she has a name to

upkeep. That is, he disowns her. With Andy’s attitude, Reid describes the

interrogation of Protestant traditions by a younger generation of women who

reject the intransience and inflexibility of masculine ideology dictating their

behavior. Like the other plays, this play, too, displays examples of the adherence

of the members of the Protestant faction to their values and traditions in the face

of the sectarian conundrums.

First of all, as a Protestant devotee and a war veteran, Andy highly respects the

Orange Bands and the duty they perform, which have always been a vital part of

the reinforcement of the loyalist ideology and solidarity. Since he wants his

granddaughter to show the same respect, he tells the story of a drummer of

Orange Bands:

Wee Billy Matchett was a huge, fat, sweaty man. The Lambeg Drum was

strapped to his chest. He had been beating the drum for a long time, and

his hands were bleeding. The blood trickled over the tattoos on his arms

… Ulster is British; No Surrender; Remember the Somme / Dunkirk / the

Relief of Derry. Billy’s little sparrow of a wife kept darting forward with a

sponge soaked in whiskey and water to cool his parched mouth and his

burning face. She didn’t attempt to sponge away the blood on his hands.

That was sacred. (258)

This parade tradition has got a prominent place in the unionist ideology because it

strengthens the bonds and solidarity among loyalists and helps the transmission

of this ideology. Billy has devoted himself to the conventional duty assigned to

him, and he is so proud. He has concentrated on his duty so much that he does not

feel any pain. The depiction also clearly points out how this Protestant tradition

has been sanctified. His devotion to this tradition is obvious in his singing at the

Somme Commemoration Parade in Derry.

As Andrea looks / moves towards the direction of the cell door, a military

band is heard playing at the Somme Commemoration Parade in Derry.

Also marching feet and crowds cheering. The band plays ‘Marching

through Georgia.’ Andy is on his feet. He signs along with the band when

it reaches the chorus. (274)

ANDY: We are, we are, we are the Billy Boys!

We are, we are, we are the Billy Boys! (274)

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His old age cannot stop him from taking part in the parade because being there he

verifies his loyalty and reinforces his loyalist identity. He is still one of the Billy

Boys and protects his Protestant identity, which actually guarantees his existence,

too.

2.2 Otherization and Maintenance of the Chasm between ‘Them’ and ‘Us’

The members of each faction in Northern Ireland are reluctant to cease the clash

persistently kindling the violence caused by both communities because the

sustenance of this civil strife contributes to the perseverance of their communal

identity which is the sole route taking them to a national identification. That is,

the sectarian violence conduces to the otherization process to reinforce their

identity. In Reid’s plays, the audience can exactly spot many instances of how

each community fosters its own uniqueness by stressing its differences from the

other group.

In “Tea in a China Cup,” at the outset of the play Beth learns from the Clerk

working at the council office that “the new cemetery is divided in two by a gravel

path [and] Protestant graves are to the right, Catholic graves to the left” (5). Beth

mentions the likely reaction that her mother will display to this segregation:

“She’ll be tickled pink when I tell her” (7). Beth is quite sure that this news will

make her mother, who is a devoted Protestant, highly elated. Her guess proves to

be correct when Sarah says: “Isn’t is great to know that you’ll be lying among

your own” (9). Even this isolation of Protestants from Catholics in the cemetery,

which is a clear extension of the line demarcating one from the “other”, brings

them closer to their communal identity.

How Beth has been christened, too, indicates the process of othering that

Protestant faction operates. She recounts her birth as if she witnessed it because

as she mentions she has heard the family stories about it so often that she can

remember and see things clearly, and she presents in detail what happened during

the time when her family was trying to find a proper name for her as follows:

God works in mysterious ways and, as he and King Billy had obviously

sent me as a replacement for my heroic Uncle Samuel I should be called

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Mary after the Good King’s wife. I didn’t die, but I wasn’t called Mary

either. It’s a very Catholic sort of name in Northern Ireland, despite King

Billy’s wife, and my mother didn’t fancy it all. She compromised by

calling me Elizabeth, after the heir to the throne. (22)

What is a part of their own community can be neglected when it comes to the

repudiation of what the “other” holds. They abstain from giving their baby a

name which is believed to belong to the “other” for the sake of maintaining the

chasm between “we” and “them.” This act strengthens their sense of self although

the name Mary is significant in their cultural history.

How the Grandmother and Great Aunt Massie admonish Beth to keep the family

affairs surreptitious evinces the way the Protestants otherize the Catholic group.

When Beth says that her mother has made the dress she is wearing out of her old

skirt, Sarah tells her not to tell that to strangers. Then the Grandmother and

Massie explain the situation to Beth:

GRANDMOTHER: Because it’s family business and it’s private. No

matter how hard times are, you don’t let yourself down in front of the

neighbors.

MASSIE: Because if you do, you bring yourself down to the level of

Catholics, whining and complainin’ and puttin’ a poor mouth on yourself.

(25)

As fierce Protestants, these women endeavor to assign an inferior position to the

Catholics – their “other” –, and hence, they tend to project negative attributes on

the “other” and imply that whatever their own community has is good.

References to Beth and Theresa’s childhood in the play also provide examples for

the sharp otherization process between the Catholic and the Protestant divisions.

This portrayal displays that the enormous divide between “us” and “them” exists

also in their education systems which is one of the initial and most crucial tools

of the socialization process the new generation should go through. These two kids

talk about the colors of their uniforms:

THERESA: I got mine last week. You want to see it. Everything’s dark

green, even the knickers.

BETH: Our uniform’s navy blue.

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THERESA: Are the knickers navy blue too?

BETH: Yes. (26-7)

The colors of the uniforms the children are supposed to wear at school are

politically important. Dark green is the color of the nationalists, while blue is the

color of the unionists. The prospective members of the society sealed by the

divide become a political apparatus of their group ideology. The existing

segregated and segregating system puts its forming rules on the new generation

from their first entrance in the socialization process onwards: They are taught

who they are and who the “others” are.

Massie’s reaction to the Butler Education Act, which aims at providing good

opportunities for the members of both communities, indicates how loyalists

desire to externalize their “other” from the ruling of the country, which is

predominated by the Protestant members:

No good’ll come of this subsidized education, you mark my words. The

Catholics will beg, borrow and steal the money to get their kids fancy

education. This country’ll suffer for it in years to come when well-

qualified Catholics start to pour out of our Queen’s University expecting

the top jobs, waitin’ a say in the runnin’ of the country. (31)

The fact that the nationalists are getting more educated and getting the

opportunity to be employed in well-paid jobs is rejected by the unionists because

the rising number of Catholic people means the loss of power for the Protestant

population. She attracts the attention to Samuel’s photo (Sarah’s brother who was

killed in War of Somme): “Is that what him and all the others died for, eh? …”

The Protestant men fought for this country. Thus, this community deserves to

reign it by getting a say in its running, and the “others” should be excluded from

high quality education and well-paid jobs.

Reid’s another play exemplifying how the divide is desired by the members of

both communities since it helps maintain the chasm as broad as possible is “Did

You Hear the One About the Irishman … ?” In this play, the playwright

juxtaposes two families from different communities, Catholic Raffertys and

Protestant Clarkes, so as to indicate the hatred each community in Northern

50

Ireland feels for the other and how persistent the clash in this country is. The two

intrepid protagonists of the play, Allison Clarke and Brian Rafferty, love each

other, disregarding their communal identities. In their affair, Reid emphasizes the

fact that neither of the communities allows this intercommunal marriage or love

(especially because Allison’s uncle is a loyalist politician), and they do their best

to hamper it. The Protestant militants make themselves believe that Brian is

spying for the Catholic commune, and the Catholic fighters think that Allison is a

spy for the Protestant activists. The play ends with the murder of both by nobody

knows who.

Initially, the dispute between Allison and her mother, Mrs. Clarke, who wants her

daughter to finish her relationship with Brian Rafferty, includes a criticism of the

exaggerated depiction of the Catholics by the Protestant community. Allison, who

supports the idea that the sectarian clash should be ended, does not accept her

mother’s objection to her affair with Brian and demands a reasonable

explanation:

MRS. CLARKE: You’re not serious about this person, are you?

ALLISON: He has a name, mother. Brian Rafferty. He was here last

week. Remember? Eye-patch. Wooden leg. Parrot on his shoulder. (75)

Mrs. Clarke’s bias makes her avoid calling Brian with his name and Allison is

thoroughly sure that as a fierce Protestant woman, her mother has got

predetermined prejudices about Brian. She critically implies that these prejudices

are really unrealistic and totally invented. When they continue their discussion on

that issue, Mrs. Clarke shows Brian’s Catholic background and his terrorist

brother as reasons for her objection. This leads Allison to indicate that her

brother’s wife, Susan is from the same background and has got a terrorist brother

in the Maze Prison, too.

MRS. CLARKE: His brother is a terrorist.

ALLISON: So is Susan’s. Or there are terrorists and terrorists, mother?

Theirs and ours? (75)

Devotees of neither community can approach the civil strife from an objective

perspective. The militants of the opposing faction are considered to be terrorists,

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whereas those who perform the same violence from their own group are not

regarded as terrorists. The “others” are labelled as the ones who cause the

violence and “we” are the ones who suffer from it and have to fight to protect

“ourselves.”

Brian and his sister, Marie, have a similar kind of conversation in which the latter

aims at highlighting the gulf between the two communities. She makes a simple

generalization with which she intends to persuade her brother to end the

relationship with Allison:

I don’t understand how you can go about with the likes of her. It’s her

kind are responsible for our Joe being where he is. You should be

concentrating on getting him out of that place. Not knocking about with

well-to-do Prods from up the Malone Road. (76)

She is determined to make him believe that Allison is a member of the “others,”

and thus, she has the same mentality as the ones who are responsible for Joe’s

being incarcerated, and therefore, she wants him to cut his relations with her

family members. She also resents that, though he is from a Catholic family, Brian

does not have the same enthusiasm as the Catholic militants. Then, towards the

end of this conversation, when Brian asks her about their mother who just stares

blankly at the cracks in the ceiling and does not talk to anyone since their father

has been shot to death, Marie reminds Brian of this murder, which Marie

believes, has been committed by a Protestant activist:

MARIE: How is she the day! She’s the same as she’s been every day

since some Protestant hero crept behind daddy and fired a bullet into the

back of his head.

BRIAN: We don’t know who killed him, Marie. (78)

Allison’s talk with her father, Mr. Clarke who is, in Allison’s words, “nice, easy-

going, middle of-the-road,” evinces that there are many people who think that the

termination of the conflict is not a desired outcome. Mr. Clarke presents his

opinion regarding the sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland:

MR. CLARKE: I don’t care one way or the other about religion. You

know that. I’m all for people leaving each other alone. But unfortunately,

52

there are too many people here who do care. I don’t want to see you

getting hurt.

ALLISON: Bigoted opinions don’t bother me.

MR. CLARKE: It’s not what they’d say, Allison. It’s what they might

do. (79)

Her father who has witnessed and experienced more about the conflict than

Allison draws the attention to the number of people supporting the

intercommunal clash and to how reluctant they are to call a halt to it. He also

warns his daughter against a possible attack. Then, Mr. Clarke draws her

attention to the peculiarity of her situation by stating that “whether you like it or

not, you are the niece of a loyalist politician. You marry a Catholic and it will be

headline news. Especially when word gets out that the groom’s brother is Joe

Rafferty” (80). The intermarriage between ordinary nationalist and unionist

families might be neglected by the militants of the two sides. However, when the

relatives of the couple play an important part in the political clash, the marriage

will certainly be paid a lot more attention by the activist members of the two

parts. Both sides will demonstrate, in a violent way if necessary, their reluctance

to let the well-defined line be trespassed.

Another play by Reid which has examples of the otherization process two sides

of the sectarian conflict keep is “Joyriders.” In this play, Reid presents the daily

activities of four Catholic teenagers, Arthur, Maureen, Sandra and Tommy, at a

youth training programme which is run at an old textile mill in Belfast and which

is managed by Kate, a social worker. The teenagers living at the Divis Flats estate

in exceedingly poor conditions feel themselves thoroughly secluded from the

society. They do not think that the project they are being trained in will be useful

for them to find jobs in the future. Especially, Tommy and Sandra suppose that

this scheme is implemented by the regime just to keep these potential young

“criminals” out of the streets since putting them in prison is more expensive than

employing them in this programme.

In this play, Reid depicts the misery the Catholic minority goes through owing to

the harsh otherization and the externalization by the Protestant majority. A piece

53

of information about Divis Flats, the residence where the Catholic minority lives,

is given after the cast of the play is introduced:

In November 1985, the Divis Residents Association and the Town and

Country Planning Association, London, held an exhibition of photographs

of the Divis Flats complex in Belfast, which was described as the worst

housing development in Western Europe. These flats provide background

for “Joyriders.” (102)

The pressure of the Protestant majority and the government dominated by the

unionists on the Catholics resulted in the latter’s economic and social

marginalization and externalization. The play has several examples of this case.

For instance, after having seen Sean O’Casey’s play Shadow of A Gunman with

Kate, the discussion between Arthur and Tommy about going to the bar reveals

the naivety of the former and the awareness of the latter concerning the social

division:

ARTHUR: We’ll all go to the bar, share a pint before Kate gets back.

TOMMY: They won’t serve us.

ARTHUR: They won’t know we’re under age.

TOMMY: I don’t mean that. Did ye see the way they looked at us when

we come in? This is a middle-class theatre. Not for the likes of us. (110)

Tommy indicates that there are certain borders between the two sides and when

anyone attempts to trespass them, the Protestant majority makes the Catholic

minority feel the excluded position they have been assigned in every sphere of

life. This dialogue is followed by a song named “Children of Divis Flats:”

We are the children of Divis Flats

And it’s for houses that we’re fighting

A place to live a place to play

A place for health and happiness

They took our houses they gave us flats

How much longer must we live here? (110)

The minority has been deprived of their houses and dragged into the flats in

unhealthy conditions, which is a part of the otherization performed by the

Protestant community.

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Moreover, what Tommy mentions in the conversation with Kate about his

stealing the paint from the Youth Training Programme is directly related with the

discrimination the Catholics suffer from in the business sector and employment.

Kate tries to explain how his theft has an influence on his own people:

KATE: I want it back, Tommy, and I want it back today.

TOMMY: What’s a couple of friggin’ tins of paint till the government?

KATE: When you nick paint from here, you’re not stealing from the

government, you’re stealing from your own people.

TOMMY: You can’t steal from people who own nothin’.

KATE: Yes you can, Tommy. You can steal away the only chance they

have. TOMMY: Of what! Of workin’ fer slave wages? (114)

Kate believes that the YTP can enhance the conditions of some of the young

people in Divis Flats and any harm to this programme will result in the

weakening of this possibility. However, Tommy claims that finishing the

programme will not guarantee them a satisfactory job and their suffering will not

come to an end. Maureen also draws Kate’s attention to the employment

problems of the young people:

KATE: You’re hard working, conscientious, no police record. You have a

high chance.

MAUREEN: You’ve no chance when the Job Centre finds out yer from

Divis Flats. (140)

The residents, particularly the young people, usually have police records of

several crimes, especially theft, since they think that they have to steal to survive

under the harsh economic conditions. Therefore, when an individual from Divis

Flats applies for a job, his or her personal and professional characteristics are

ignored, and this individual is doomed to encounter a prejudiced attitude. In other

words, in which part of Belfast one lives or which community one belongs to

matters when the Job Office makes a decision.

Tommy’s prediction about Kate’s mother’s attitude towards four young people

from Divis Flats points out the social exclusion of the Catholic community. When

Kate invites them to celebrate Arthur’s winning the court case and taking

financial compensation for the injury by British Army, Tommy says: “Your ma

55

wouldn’t want the likes of us in your house” (139). Kate relieves them: “My

mother’s staying with her sister for a few days” (139). Tommy, who has so much

internalized the gulf between the two communities and the way the Catholic

minority has been secluded in the Northern Irish society, reminds Kate and the

others of the dividing line between their and Kate’s social environment.

However, Kate’s reply does confirm Tommy’s prediction when she implies that

her mother would not want them in their house.

“The Belle of the Belfast City,” too, evinces examples of the way the Protestant

community otherizes the Catholics, which has become more acute at the time of

conflict especially during the “Troubles.” The conversation between Vi and Jack,

especially the words full of hatred for Janet’s husband, Peter, who is from the

Catholic side, point out this otherization:

JACK: I suppose he’s got himself another woman. Catholic

licentiousness. It never leaves them.

VI: Peter’s a good man.

JACK: A Catholic policeman! It’s like of him who’ve infiltrated the

Royal Ulster Constabulary. Corrupted the force into fighting against us

instead of standing alongside us as they’ve always done. (185)

Peter’s personal features do not matter for Jack in deciding whether he is an

appropriate husband for his sister or not. He just concentrates on Peter’s religious

belief, and his communal background is sufficient evidence for Jack to judge

about him. All his judgment is entrapped in his prejudiced approach shaped by

the otherization process of the unionist ideology.

The otherization of the Catholics by the Protestant faction is also obvious in the

dialogue between Jack and Vi. She wants him to tell Davy, the deaf and mentally

retarded boy helping her in the shop, not to go to the Protestant rally since his

mother thinks that Davy will do exactly what Jack tells as he admires Jack. Vi

claims that there will be violence in the demonstration as in the previous one, but

Jack asserts the opposite:

VI: He can’t hear the grand speeches, Jack. He goes because the flags and

the banners and the crowds excite him. The violence excites him.

JACK: There will be no violence. It will be a peaceful protest.

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VI: You said that last time, and look what happened.

JACK: It was not our doing. The police created the violence.

Vi: There was a riot, Jack. I was there. I saw.

JACK: The Catholics riot. We do not. We are a respectable people. (190)

Jack makes a generalization concerning the whole Catholic community, and

highlights the chasm between “we” and “they.” He lays stress on “our”

respectability while he assigns “them” with rebellious character.

Vi’s and Rose’s opposing comments on the social and political conflict in

Northern Ireland indicate a significant point about the otherization of the

Catholics in this country. Vi clearly mentions that she supports Jack’s loyalist

ideas while Rose avers that the Catholic minority is repudiated “in how their

country should be run” (220). Then, she draws attention to the inevitability and

vitality of otherization for the Protestant part: “Northern Ireland was created as a

Protestant State for Protestant People, and if they agree to power sharing, they’ll

have agreed to do away with the very reason for the state’s existence. Don’t you

see that?” (221). Partition Act actually aimed at changing the conditions for the

good of the Protestant faction on the island. That is, a state was created so that the

Protestants can become a majority while the Catholics suffer from minority

position. Therefore, in the establishment of this state, otherization played a

significant part, and this otherization should be kept for the maintenance of its

existence. Besides, towards the end of their dispute, Rose attempts to question the

party Vi votes for in the elections, and at that point appears the real reason why

Vi feels she has to keep the otherization she has constructed for the Catholic

community:

ROSE: You could have voted for one of the more moderate parties.

VI: What! Split the vote and let the Sinn Feiners in? The mouthpiece of

bombers and murderers. Sinn Fein. Ourselves Alone. Not much hint of

power sharin’ in that! Maybe you’d like to see the IRA in control of

Belfast City Council.

ROSE: I’d like to see the people here voting for, and not against, in every

election. Sooner or later, Protestant or Catholic, we have all got to take

that risk.

VI: We? That’s easy to say, when you don’t live in the middle of it. When

there’s no risk of losin’ nationality, your religion, everything you’ve lived

your life by, and believed in. (223)

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Vi cannot take the risk of finishing the exclusion of the Catholics from the

political arena and the cessation of their otherized position in Northern Ireland.

She evidently remarks that this will certainly lead into their loss of national

values and religious beliefs on which they have based all their existence.

In the wake of the cruel interrogation of Davy by the Royal Ulster Constabulary,

Rose and Jack have a vehement dispute on the IRA and Unionists in which she

tries to make Jack cognizant of his harsh otherizing mentality:

JACK: You think they should be allowed to get away with it?

ROSE: No, I don’t. No more than I thought they should have been

allowed to get away with it when they did that and worse during the

interrogation of suspected IRA terrorists. But that never bothered the

Unionists at all, did it? In fact you were all for it, as long as it was being

done to the Catholics, innocent or guilty.

JACK: They’re all guilty. Potential traitors every one. (247)

She criticizes the loyalist politician for his subjective approach to the terrorists

because he is for the harsh treatment against the IRA but not against the loyalist

terrorists. Also, she evinces her objection to the way all the Catholics are treated

as terrorists regardless of their being innocent or guilty, and Jack corroborates his

support for this way of treatment.

“My Name, Shall I Tell You My Name?” is another play in which Reid depicts

how the Protestants maintain an otherization process during the social and

political divide in Northern Ireland. Firstly, what Andy thinks about Edward

Reilly, one of his greatest friends before the war, is an example of otherization.

Reilly takes part in the War of Somme with other Ulstermen, but his experiences

in the war lead to a radical change in his approach to the Protestant ideology.

Andy’s description of his change deserves attention:

Turned down his medal. Canvassed for the Labor Party after the war.

Made speeches against the government and the monarchy. Betrayed all

the brave men who fought and died so that we could be British and free.

Turncoats and Communists. Catholic throwbacks, the lot of them. What

sort of a name’s Reilly for a Protestant family. Intermarried way back to

raise themselves out of the gutter. But it never leaves them. Popery. Bad

Blood. Nationalism. Communism. Same difference. (261)

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Any kind of digression from the route Protestant ideology has defined for its

members or any kind of questioning of ideology will encounter complete

exclusion of its holders from the community. When they are excluded from the

loyalist group, they are “others” from then on. They are not different from the

Catholics. Besides, when he states that Maggie Thatcher has been a great Prime

Minister and would end the “Troubles” on a day, Andy directly evinces his

detestation for the nationalist Catholic community: “She’d have sailed the big

gunboats into Derry the way she did to the Falklands, an’ wiped the Fenians off

the face of the earth” (268). Andy is of the opinion that the reason of the

emergence of the “Troubles” is only the Catholic community. That is, as a

devoted loyalist man, he puts all the blame on the other side. Accordingly, it can

be inferred that the existence of Catholics is undesirable not only on the island

but also on earth by unionists, which is a reflection of his abhorrence on the other

group, “them.”

2.3 Inculcating the New Generation

The people who have devoted themselves to their communal identity or who have

got no other sense of belonging than this identity do not want to call a halt to the

conflictual circumstances in Northern Ireland. Its sustenance is indispensible for

the maintenance of their identity. Therefore, to ensure that, both groups impose

their working ideology on their new members whose divergence from the rigid

and predetermined route will definitely constitute a threat. Christina Reid’s plays

are abundant with examples of how this kind of imposition works in society.

In “Tea in a China Cup,” the scene when Sarah’s family sees off Samuel who is

going to fight against France in Somme presents the importance the old family

members give to teaching them the values of their community though they are

little kids. For instance, Grandfather is of the opinion that little Sammy should be

present while his uncle departs: “I’ll go and get him [little Sammy]. He’ll have to

see his uncle off …” (13). The Grandfather supposes that seeing off his uncle will

teach him their loyalty to the Crown and for which country their people fight.

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When Sarah, the Grandmother and Great Aunt Massie comment on the dirt on

Beth’s face, their perception of the other is explicitly revealed:

SARAH: She looks like one of them wee street urchins from the Catholic

quarter.

…

MASSIE (to BETH): Keep still, child … there now, that’s a bit more

Protestant-lookin’.

BETH: Are all the Catholic children dirty?

MASSIE: I never seen a clean one yet.

BETH: Why are they dirty?

GRANDMOTHER: It’s just the way they are. They’re not like us. (23)

They inculcate Beth to associate the filthiness with Catholicism and cleanliness

with the community she was born into so that she can form a “true” image of a

Catholic and a “true” image of a Protestant.

In the same scene, the Grandmother’s and Massie’s references to two poor kinds

also aim at teaching Beth the “difference” between the two communities. On

Beth’s question, the old women separate this phenomenon into two:

MASSIE: They never scrub their front steps nor black-lead their fires nor

nothin’. They’re clarty and poor.

BETH: Are we not poor?

GRANDMOTHER: There’s poor and poor. We keep our houses nice,

always dress clean and respectable. There’s no shame in a neat darn or a

patch as long as a body is well washed.

MASSIE: And we don’t go about cryin’ poverty and puttin’ a poor mouth

on ourselves the way they do neither. Did you hear thon oul nationalist

politician on the wireless the other day? Tellin’ the world about goin’ to

school bare-fut in his da’s cut-down trousers? I would cut my tongue out

before I’d demean my family like that. (23)

She is taught what she is supposed to do as a Protestant and what characteristics

the Catholics are supposed to have. In other words, the old women teach her with

what sort of prejudice in her mind she should approach a member of the Catholic

community.

The “why” questions Beth asks when her Grandmother and Great Aunt attempt to

teach her some communal rules of Protestantism make Massie furious. The

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Grandmother tries to make Beth understand the significance of keeping their

family secrets:

GRANDMOTHER: It’s strangers you don’t say that sort of thing to.

BETH: Why?

MASSIE: Why? Why? I swear to God, that vain was born askin’

questions. (25)

As a curious child, Beth incessantly asks questions to her grandmother and aunt.

However, Massie’s getting furious could not only come from the difficulty they

have in teaching Beth a rule but also from the intimidation she feels concerning

her social identity. That is, Beth’s questions make her revise their fixed and

usually irrational thoughts from another angle and, thus, they feel the danger of

diverting from the “true” answer of these questions. Indeed, what Beth questions

is the so called well-defined values which, as a rule, cannot be investigated or

which are nonnegotiable thoughts and beliefs. However, her questions threaten

the others.

Another example for the investigating attitude of the new generation reveals itself

in a conversation between Beth and Theresa. The friendship of the two kids from

different communities provides an opportunity for them to test the truth of what

they have been taught by their family members:

BETH: Aren’t your teachers all nuns?

THERESA: Some of them are. They’ll all be nuns when I go to the

convent grammar school.

BETH: Is it true that they always go around in pairs because one of

them’s really a man?

THERESA: Who told you that?

BETH: My Great Aunt Massie.

THERESA: Nuns are women. The men are called monks. Your aunt’s

having you on.

BETH: She read it in a book that was written by a girl who escaped from

a convent.

THERESA: My granny has a book about a rich Protestant landowner,

and all these young Catholic girls worked in his big house and they all got

babies, so they did. (27)

Both kids have been told some myths about the other community, but when each

tells the “other” the myth including biases about the members of the other

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community, they happen to learn that what they know about their own group and

what the other group knows about them are in stark contrast. Therefore, they

could come to a conclusion that either of these versions of the “truth” is wrong. In

other words, they could question what they have heard from their family

members.

Beth could detect easily the imposition of the sectarian divide by the old

members on the new generation. As a child, Beth is curious about how babies are

born, and the number of kids the Catholics have attracts her attention:

Babies were a gift from God to married women. I asked my Great Aunt

Massie why God gives more gifts to the Catholics if the Protestants of

Ulster were his chosen people. She said it was because the Catholics were

greedy. They were always looking for something for nothing. (28)

As a smart child, Beth has spotted the inconsistency in this imposition, but

Massie clarifies the issue with another bias concerning the opposing Catholic

community.

Sarah’s expectations from Beth on the continuation of the traditions also manifest

the old generation’s inculcation of the fixed conventions to their kids. Sarah, who

is terminally ill, wants to ensure that her daughter will maintain sit-down tea

afterwards:

SARAH: You’ll do things proper for me, won’t you?

BETH: You know I will.

SARAH: Promise.

BETH: I promise.

SARAH: With a proper sit-down tea afterwards.

BETH: With a proper sit-down tea … afterwards

SARAH: It’s a pity your granny and your Aunt Massie are gone, they

knew the right way of these things. (33)

The fact that her daughter will observe the traditions the way she has taught her

gives Sarah a sort of relief because her values will not wither in the next

generations. She also implies that Beth should take her grandmother and aunt as

models in observing conventions.

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However, Beth is not happy with the exaggerated dose of imposition she has been

exposed to. That is, being confined all her life into her family traditions, she has

not been given any chance to shape her life. She discusses this point with her

lifelong confidante, Theresa, by enunciating that “I’ve never been just me. I’ve

never made a decision in my life, Theresa” (50). She is fed up with being

controlled by others: “Don’t you tell me what I should do! All my life people

have been telling me what I should do!” (61). She has been paralyzed by the

imposition of her mother, grandmother and aunt who have been demanding

absolute submission to conventions. Thus, she still poses a threat to the

continuation of the divide. This indicates that the inculcation has proved to be

unsuccessful in her case.

“Did You Hear the One About the Irishman … ?,” another Reid play, comprises

instances of how the old members of the community deal with the new generation

who are not fierce adherents of the divide and are willing to attempt to change the

conflictual environment in Northern Ireland. For instance, Mr. Clarke shares one

of his experiences with his daughter so that she can understand how stiff the

segregated and segregating social structure in Northern Ireland is. He explains

how his mentality has been constructed in a disparate manner and how he is

unaware of the enormity and salience of the problem:

Your grandfather, my father, had a stroke and I found myself suddenly in

charge of the factory. There was … an arrangement … about the

workforce. There wasn’t a Catholic employed in the place. Protestants all.

From the managing director to the old man who swept the floors. I’d

always known about it, but I’d never given it much thought until I became

the boss. I’d been away from Ireland a lot. Educated in England. Travels

abroad. (80)

Being away from Ireland, he has not been exposed to the imposition of the

traditions in adequate degree. He has been cognizant of the sectarian conflict in

every sphere of life, but he has never felt its rigidity before. He recounts what has

occurred as a result:

I considered myself a liberal thinker. I was naïve enough to believe that

good intentions could change the world. Your Brian is like that. I was

wrong, of course. When word got around the factory that I’d shortlisted a

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Catholic woman for canteen manageress, I received a delegation from the

men. The message was very clear. Don’t even consider it or we shut down

the plant. The same day, I was summoned by my father’s bedside. He was

propped up with pillows. Half paralyzed. But his message was also very

clear. One more stunt like that and he’s bring my cousin George in as

head of the family business. Whatever damn fool ideas I’d picked up in

Oxford, I could forget them. (80)

Any attempt to modify the fixed principles adopted by the Protestant community

is harshly received by its members. For those who think that a change in the

organizing rules of the system is possible, the other members re-clarify the

borders and thus keep the chasm as wide as possible. For this end, they do not fail

to threaten anybody who poses a threat to the continuation of the conflictual

clash.

Dissemination of the news about the murder of the couple, Allison and Brian,

functions to crystallize the conflict and any attempt to put an end to the civil

strife. At the end of the play, the Irishman reads the piece of information to the

audience from the newspaper:

Miss Clarke was the niece of the Unionist politician Mr. Henry Sinclair,

who today claimed that the IRA were responsible, and called on the

Secretary of State for Northern Ireland to order more troops into the

province for the protection of its British citizens. However, a police

spokesman said today that Brian Rafferty comes from a family with

known Republican sympathies. His brother Joseph is serving a life

sentence in the Maze Prison for terrorist offences including bombing and

murder. (96)

The Protestant side will certainly hold the IRA responsible, while the Catholics

will claim that unionist fighters have killed this couple. The abhorrence between

the two groups will definitely increase and, thus, the gulf will get wider. This

incident will be narrated in appropriate versions by the members of the two parts

while they are teaching the new members how unchanging the characteristics of

the divide are. Accordingly, the conflict will continue and they will secure their

communal identity.

In “Joyriders,” there are examples of the dominant community’s inculcation for

both its own members and the members of the opposing side. It teaches its own

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young members that the Catholic community in Divis Flats is composed of

thieves, joyriders and the supporters of the IRA. It transfers the message to the

members of the other part through violence and occasionally bloodshed that due

to their religious credo and nationalist beliefs, they have been dragged into the

worst residence of the Western Europe. These activities leave their permanent

imprints on their bodies and minds. Arthur’s story of assault by the army forces

though he has not committed any crime is a case in point:

I was walkin’ down the street an’ all of a sudden there was all this gunfire.

A wee lad about that high run past me, an’ I thought, you wee bugger you

nearly got me shot. An’ then I looked down an’ there was all this blood,

an’ I thought, Christ, some poor bugger has got shot. An’ I looked aroun’

an’ there was nobody there but me. An’ then I fainted. There was no pain

nor nuthin’. That came after. (129)

The army forces terrorize the streets of Divis Flats any time of the day and it is

quite likely that you might be shot while you are walking around, which proves

the highly intensive domination and pressure of the government upon the

marginalized Catholic side.

The other bloody event is Maureen’s murder on the day when Jeremy Saunders

from the Home Office visits to check the YTP. A group of kids are planning to do

a joyride. Tommy tells what has happened in the street:

The street’s fulla kids, dozens of them. They’re all over the place,

screamin’ shoutin’ throwin’ at the army and the police … the kids won’t

let them near the car … an’ yer man Saunders has arrived, an’ the Brits

are tryin’ to protect him, get his big Mercedes outa the street … it’s like

bedlam out there … (170)

Maureen, who has stolen the clothes two women have just bought, wants to flee

from the police during this trouble in which her brother, Johnnie, is one of the

main actors. Then, the police shoots her to death; most probably there have been

many other deaths and injuries in this trouble. How this problem is handled by

the police indicates that the government does not hesitate to use any method to

maintain the marginalized position to which the Catholics were pushed into. This

reaction of the police to this joyriding gang is because it is composed of the

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young population of this minority who are potentially a threat to the dominance

of the Protestant government. Sandra can easily predict how this incident will be

subverted by the newspapers the following day: “Shoplifter gets shot.” It is no

more than a usual event in Divis Flats for the other people, so no detail is given

about Maureen. In brief, with this event, the biases that the system enforces in the

Protestant community against the Catholic side are reinforced once more.

“The Belle of the Belfast City,” too, dramatizes instances of how the system

performs its inculcation process to sustain the conflict and, thus, keep its

existence. The rally in which the Protestant community plans to demonstrate its

opposition to the Anglo-Irish agreement is a way to define the borders between

the two groups. Jack stresses the participation of all Protestants in the

demonstration: “Saturday is the first anniversary of the signing of the Anglo-Irish

Agreement. Every loyal man, woman and child must take to the streets to show

the British government they will never defeat us. Never! Never! Never!” (190).

Through this demonstration, the loyalists make clear their position about this

agreement; and the social and political solidarity among the members of the

community. Thus, they want to redefine the well-drawn line between the

nationalists and the unionists; the message is evident: who supports the

agreement is on the republican side and who protests it is on the loyalist side.

Belle’s observation of the Belfast city as a complete outsider and peculiarly her

words about Vi reveal how the Protestant community teaches its members not to

menace the system later. She elucidates how her aunt’s loyalist identity has been

forged:

My aunt Vi has lived here all her life and has never set foot in West

Belfast. Injun Country. The Badlands. Her image of the Falls Road are

conjured up by Nationalist songs and stories and recitations. And the news

bulletins and the rhetoric of the Reverend Ian Paisley confirm everything

she fears to be true. She votes for the Unionist Party to keep the

Republican Party out. (214)

Nationalist imposition does not fail to impose its tenets on its members through

various media at early age and, then, what has been structured in their minds is

fostered and strengthened by the loyalist politicians. Educated and entrapped in

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this system, they are conditioned to feel secure in this identity and therefore

cannot strip themselves off the position assigned by their faction.

In his rehearsal for his grand speech as part of the demonstration, Jack gives

advice to the members of the Protestant community:

Guard our women. Guard our children. Lest they succumb to the insidious

evil that festers and grows in our land. The phallic worship of priests in

scarlet and gold. The pagan rites of black nuns. Sisters of satan. Sisters of

sin. Defilers of man’s. Guard your mothers. Guard your daughters. Guard

your sisters and wives. (242)

With guarding, Jack implies the necessity of the inculcation of the community

members with communal values and traditions to guard them against any threat

from Catholicism. The community teaches its members the customs and the

conventions they have to value, and the biases and the abhorrence they have to

reflect upon the other side. The maintenance of those which have been imprinted

in their minds and souls will guarantee their protection against any kind of

diversion from the route drawn for them.

Furthermore, in “My Name, Shall I Tell You My Name?” the playwright presents

examples of how the old generation educates the new members of the community

so that they do not or cannot menace the system. Initially, Andy and Andrea’s

“voices are heard reciting a poem, in 1964 when Andrea was aged two and Andy

was aged seventy-one” (254):

My name, shall I tell you my name

It’s hard but I’ll try

Sometimes I forget it, that’s when I’m shy

But I have another, I never forget

So easy, so pretty

And that’s Granda’s Pet. (253)

Reid intentionally opens the play with this poem to manifest that Andy’s ideas

have wholly shaped Andrea’s identity and the whole play is based on the fact that

the old generation endeavors to have an influence upon the identity formation

process of the new individuals of the faction. It can be inferred from the poem

that when one can name somebody, it gives him or her the feeling that s/he has

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tamed this person. Andy’s reaction to his granddaughter’s successful

memorization of the poem should be paid attention: “You’re perfect. You’re my

joy. The light of my life” (253). The girl’s adoption of the name “Granda’s Pet”

more than her Christian name gives him a great pleasure. Then, the way he has

shaped her identity is evident in what he says to Andrea who reports “‘I learned

you to talk, and I learned you to walk,’ he used to say. ‘Your old granda learned

you how to make your way in the world’” (254). Andy implies that he has

determined what and how she is going to talk and which path she is going to take.

In addition, when Andrea decides to pursue her further education in England,

Andy provides for her an accommodation where she will not forget her

background. He sends her to the house of a friend of his:

ANDY: I wanted her to be safe an’ looked after proper. With regular

meal, an’ hot milk on her cornflakes … I fixed her up with a room at

Freda Sloan’s. I know Freda would see her right.

ANDREA: Walking into Freda’s house was like stepping back into his.

(265)

Even though the locations are disparate, the ideology permeating the homely

environment is not different. He thinks that she will maintain the ideology he has

imposed on her and will be immune from the liberal ideologies in London.

However, Andrea’s leaving Freda’s house proves the opposite:

ANDREA: Freda was kind and strict and interfering. Like a well-

intentioned warder in an open prison. (The metal door slams and echoes in

the distance again.) You can run away from an open prison …

ANDY has taken a bundle of postcards out of the tin box.

ANDY: Dear granda, I’m sorry if I’ve upset you and Freada by moving

out … (266)

She has liberated herself from the monitoring impact of the loyalist ideology,

which has actually caused great pain for Andy. He does not exhibit his pain since

this is the first time she has drawn a pathway for herself and is resolute to stroll

on it. Then, this liberation ends up with her decision to marry Hanif, which leads

him to say “Get out of my sight” (270). Afterwards she discerns the profundity of

image of her grandfather in her: “I close my eyes and try to picture Annie, or

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Hanif, or my mother. But my heart and my hands reach out for him, and I draw

his face over and over again …” (275). An attempt at liberation turns out to be

deeper realization of her entanglement. She cannot erase his impact on her

identity.

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CHAPTER III

EMPLOYING THE FORGETTING / REMEMBERING PROCESSES FOR

THE CONTINUATION OF THE SECTARIAN CLEAVAGE IN

NORTHERN IRELAND IN CHRISTINA REID’S PLAYS “TEA IN A

CHINA CUP,” “DID YOU HEAR THE ONE ABOUT THE IRISHMAN …

?,” “JOYRIDERS,” “THE BELLE OF THE BELFAST CITY,” AND “MY

NAME, SHALL I TELL YOU MY NAME?”

Many theorists of national identity contend that one of the vital constituents of

nation building process is the way how the national memory is organized, and

they call this organization as the forgetting / remembering process. What is

selected to make the people recollect from the past memories and what they are

reinforced to forget in their social memory considerably contribute to the

imagination of a nation in the minds of the people. That is, the memory of the

nationals is moulded, which is an important determining factor in their national

identity. Conway expounds on the relationship between memory and identity as

follows:

Sociologists view memory as a key locus of identity formation. Memory,

they argued, is embodied in us as part of who we are. Put another way,

people’s representations of the past are a window onto their identity. By

identity formation I mean the process by which individuals develop and

sustain a sense of self in and through the social groups to which they

belong. (310)

Therefore, in this building process the social groups to which the individuals

imagine themselves adhered play an important part since they supply the material

of the social memory. In other words, “what we remember and what we forget is

to a greater or lesser extent shaped by the social environment in which we are

embedded.” This memory shaping process is performed provided that “we share

with others the memories they hold of significant events, happenings, and people

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in their lives” (Conway 311-2). Thus, the bondage of the people with the past is

persistently preserved, and through this bondage what happened in the past

maintains its impact on our present deeds. On the other hand, the present

perspective we hold is a determining dynamic about how we perceive the past

memories because “memories, as a medium for understanding the past, are a part

of wider cultural practices that are continually being adapted and rephrased to

meet the needs of the present” (Jarman 5). Connerton clarifies this reciprocal

liaison between past and present: “Present factors tend to influence … our

recollections of the past, but also past factors tend to influence, or distort, our

experience of the present” (2). “Historical accounts are selected, framed, and used

often to make a point about the present and the future” (Senehi 43). Jarman

concentrates on what kind of role present perspectives play on the orchestration

of the past memories to fit them for our present needs:

It is the desires and aspirations of the present that shape our views of the

past, while at the same time those present aspirations are partly formed by

our understanding of our past. We use the past by remembering

selectively those events that help to explain or justify what is happening in

the present, a present that can therefore be portrayed as the inevitable and

only outcome of those same events. The changing needs and

circumstances of the present mean that memories are monitored and re-

evaluated, and our understanding of the past is adapted to changing

circumstances. (5)

Exploitation of the past events for present purposes involves a selective forgetting

and remembering; they are revised; some details are deleted and some are added

to them.

Northern Ireland is filled with examples of how the past events persevere their

impact on the people’s perceptions and actions now. Both Protestant and Catholic

communities make a great effort to keep the past memories as fresh as possible to

be able to guarantee their survival. Jarman explains why they are in need of this

effort:

A social memory becomes a central facet of the ideological armory of the

group, helping to legitimize and rationalize difference by rooting it in the

far-distant past and thus placing weight on the primordial or essential

nature of the antagonisms or otherness. (6)

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On this process of referring to the past, Lowenthall states that “some societies

need no re-enactment to reactivate history; the process seems to be ingrained,

habitual” (250). He shows Ireland as an example for this type of societies: “the

Irish do not ‘live in the past; rather, Ireland’s history ‘lives in the present’ [and]

all previous traitors and all previous heroes remain alive in it’” (250). O’Grady

states that; “Memory in Ireland is politicised. All competing political ideologies

are forms of speculation on the country’s identity based upon attitudes to its past”

(257). The whole country is stuck in the past, which has effaced their present

according to O’Grady who avers:

The past hangs like ectoplasm about the landscape, so enticing and

powerful that it distorts the conventional functioning of time. It has been

said that in Ireland the future is full of remorse, the past is full of promise

and the present does not exist at all. (257)

The part of Ireland which has suffered this stuck position most is Northern

Ireland where historical events and characters persist in playing a cardinal role in

the political and social life (Jarman 2). This role is such an obvious phenomenon

in this country that;

One might ask why battles of seventeenth century are still remembered as

important events 300 years later? Why does a seventeenth century British

king who is all but unknown in England feature as an icon of British

identity in Northern Ireland? Why do historical and mythological figures,

such as King William III and St Patrick, mean to the people living in the

north of Ireland? How have the complex identities subsumed within the

populist rhetoric ‘Protestant’ and ‘Catholic’ been created, developed and

maintained since the arrival of the colonists from England and Scotland in

the seventeenth century? And why are they the most prominent anchors

for collective identities? (Jarman 2)

Both unionists and nationalists have based all their activities on these historical

events to preserve their collectivity. Accordingly, Jarman remarks that “from the

beginning of the Troubles… paramilitary groupings have caused a considerable

amount of death, destruction and injury… They did this while appealing to

abstract ideals of nationality and to the precedent of history” (3). Since they have

different national ideologies, they (have to) have different versions of histories to

buttress these ideologies. This indicates that the forgetting / remembering process

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employed by the two sectarian communities in Northern Ireland does lead to the

perseverance of the social and political divide. Each faction utilizes this process

to strengthen their ethno-religious identities, and this, rather than create a

common national identity for both sides, leads into abhorrence for the other side.

That is, since what they recollect and keep fresh ascribes not to what they share

as a people in Northern Ireland, it results in the persistence of the division rather

than efface it. In brief, new generations are also entrapped in the sectarian

conflict narrated by their fathers and grandfathers and cannot narrate a nation.

Theirs turns into a conflict building not a nation building process.

The use of the forgetting / remembering process by the two opposing parts in

Northern Ireland is vividly exemplified in varying contexts in Christina Reid’s

plays. Old family members repeatedly tell the younger ones the stories that

include what their family or community has undergone thus far, especially the

pains, joys, victories, family gatherings; they have strong enthusiasm to watch

even the preparation activities of the parades for the commemoration of the wars

such as Orange Parade, Somme Parade; the photos of soldiers are carefully kept

and valued; stories are generated to be remembered by the future generations. As

in these instances, particularly four constituents of this process are dramatized by

the playwright: remembering the old stories and memories, creation of stories to

be reminisced about by the future generations, commemoration activities and

museumizing objects to remember the past.

The interaction between past and present is sustained and strengthened through

the transmission of the old memories about the social group to its members, and

the storytelling is a seminal activity in this transmission. We are “memory-

carrying people” says Falconer (102). In such a context, culture metamorphoses

into “a people enacting or telling a story, and the stories we share with one

another carry our memories forward within them from one generation to another

through socialization” (Conway 310). In her essay “Constructive Storytelling: A

Peace Process” Jessica Senehi demonstrates the significance of the narratives in

the creation and communication of meaning. She notes that “within a particular

context, meaning is negotiated through narratives … [and] narratives serve as a

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rationale for action” (43). Then she clarifies this negotiation: “Because cultural

narratives encode the knowledge that everyone in the group buys into, they can

be reframed to comment critically and persuasively on social life. Narratives

operate in the world and get results” (43).

As a form of narrative, storytelling is one of the most important media that is

utilized to shape the communal memory and the communal identity: “Through

stories we represent and reconstruct the past, [and] identity is generated and

maintained through the process of storytelling” (Leonard 1117). As Somers

asserts, “people construct identities (however multiple and changing) within a

repertoire of emplotted stories” (606). This genre of narration has got a

remarkable position among cultural narratives because it can be easily accessed

by everyone and requires no special equipment, and children can listen to,

understand and memorize stories narrated by their parents and grandparents at

their early ages (Senehi 43-4). Therefore, storytelling has become an effective

tool used by all societies to inculcate their culture to their young members:

“Stories are told by adults to children and their telling enables children to

internalize distant memories important to group identity and reproduce them in

the stories they tell their own children” (Leonard 1118). As Senehi observes:

stories are a means of socializing children in all cultures. … Such

storytelling is also a process of political socialization and teaches about

identity, power, and inter-group relations. Family storytelling is also a

means through which inter-communal conflicts and identity-based

prejudice are transmitted through the generations. (50)

This fact leads those who create and narrate the stories to stand in a crucial

position for the continuation of culture: “Those who generate narratives –

storytellers broadly conceived – are in a position of relative control in the process

of the social construction of meaning; they have narrator potency” (Senehi 43-4).

Closely related with that issue, the orchestration of the memory for the present

needs causes the storytellers to be selective in their narration. Leonard elucidates

this point:

We tell stories to others and we listen to others’ stories. Throughout our

everyday lives we are likely to tell and hear a wide range of confirming

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and contradictory stories. Some stories we may choose not to tell. Others

we may tell to some people and not to others. In our telling and retelling

of stories we may add further details or leave some elements missing.

Each airing of the story may change aspects of it and yet at each stage we

may assume that we are giving an accurate account or indeed we may

choose to deliberately embellish or fabricate elements of the story. (1118)

This selectiveness is very much obvious in the stories recounted by the two

communities in Northern Ireland, where it is proved that “storytelling and other

modes of expression may, in fact, intensify social cleavages and mistrust and

perpetuate structural violence” (Senehi 45).

“Tea in a China Cup” is composed of the stories which are narrated by the

protagonist, Beth, who knows what her family has experienced for three

generations. She has learnt many of these family experiences by listening

numerous times to senior members of the family, and she has witnessed some of

them herself. Therefore, the structure of the play is based on the process of

recollecting these stories. The actual setting of the play is Beth’s house, where

three generations of her family have lived, in 1972, but when a story is mentioned

in the conversation between her mother and Beth, Beth walks forward and

addresses the audience. Thus, with this sort of a structure the playwright puts the

emphasis on how often a conversation between two family members (generally

an old and a young one) is marked with a reminiscence of a story and its

(re)narration at that time. It is also implied in employment of this structure that

the past still holds an immense influence upon the present in Northern Irish

context, and Reid draws attention to the entanglement of the people of this

country in history and to how the present is directed and justified by what the

people have gone through in the past. Crooke observes, “people in Northern

Ireland have a very keen sense of the past; it is how the past is used to inform the

present that is the issue” (75). In short, the repetitive narration of the past stories

leads to the present narration of each community, and it metamorphoses into an

ontological process.

Beth’s narration of the old family stories commences with Sarah’s reminding her

daughter of the day when she took her to the Field at Finaghy. Because she is

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terminally ill, Sarah desires to stand in the Field with her daughter and she recalls

the time when she was in the Field to watch the parade in spite of all difficulties:

SARAH: You mind it now, you mind it all the old family stories, tell

them to your children after I’m gone.

BETH: … I couldn’t possibly remember it, I was only an infant, but I’ve

heard that story and all the other family stories so often that I can

remember and see clearly things that happened even before I was born …

like the day my mother’s brother Samuel went off to fight for King and

Country. (10)

The transmission of the old family stories is attached extraordinary significance

since their transmission from one generation to the next ensures the maintenance

of their communal identity. Sarah and the other family members have made a

great effort to teach all the stories to Beth by repeating them many times. Thus,

she can transmit them now as if she had lived them, and this also adds to her own

process of communal identity formation.

The Grandfather, who fought for the Great Britain in the First World War, told

his martial experiences to Samuel, which has most probably played a crucial role

in his decision to be a voluntary soldier. This narration of stories encounters the

Grandmother’s opposition: “He’s still only a child. This is all your doin’, filling

his head full of nonsense abut the great times you had with the lads in France

during the First World War” (11). Samuel has gone through the same process as

Beth: he has been told, many times, stories by his father since his early

childhood. Having heard about the great times, Samuel has become a true loyalist

and a highly enthusiastic soldier to fight for the British Army in any part of the

world. These experiences his grandfather lived and told him have been influential

upon his motivation to enlist for the war in which it is very likely that he will be

killed.

After several days, a telegram is received from the officer in charge of records in

the British Army. It informs them that Samuel has been wounded. Sarah and the

Grandmother go to Bedford to visit Samuel in St. Luke’s hospital. Several days

after they come back home, another telegram informs them that Samuel has died.

Then, this has become a family story which will be remembered by the other

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members and the future generations. As a Protestant devotee, Massie reminds the

other family members of Samuel’s story to use it as a support in her argument by

pointing at his photo: “Is that what him and all the others died for, eh? To educate

the Catholics so that they can take over Ulster? By God, he’s well out of it. He

must be turnin’ in his grave this day” (31). She endeavors to keep his memory

fresh in the their minds by reminding them of his story to which all the family

members are sensitive, and thus she aims at making them adopt an opposition to

any possible administrative changes like the Catholics’ getting educated, holding

the top jobs with a say in the running of the country.

Beth is suffocated due to the endless stories of other people, and she can only

disclose her feelings concerning this problem to a person out of the community

who could have an objective opinion about it. In a tired voice, she tells Theresa

that: “I’m scared, Theresa … my mother is dying and very soon for the first time

in my life I am going to be alone … and I’m scared … my head is full of other

people’s memories. I don’t know who I am … what I am …” (61). The fact that

she has heard the other people’s stories many times and her excessive dependence

on her mother can be considered as parallel. She has been exposed to other

people’s narratives all the time, which stopped her from narrating herself as an

individual – narrating a unique individual identity for herself.

Along with the examples displaying the significant function of the stories in the

forgetting and remembering process, Reid obviously draws attention to the

artificial nature of these stories, too. While telling the audience about the image

of Samuel in the minds of the family members, Beth gives clues about the

characteristics of the stories: “He remained in their hearts forever young, forever

true, a perfect son and brother, a perfect man. If he had survived the war, I

wonder would he have lived up to all their expectations. No one will ever know”

(31). Reid puts the emphasis on the way the heroes in the stories are assigned

with a sacred position in the national or communal memory. In other words, the

people’s tendency to produce heroes in the stories and the social mechanism

which moulds the stories to embellish the collective memory are problematized.

Besides, both Samuel’s father and Samuel participated in the war, yet the place

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bestowed to Samuel in familial and communal memory is utterly different from

the one his father has.

The Grandmother’s, Great Aunt Massie’s and Sarah’s visit to a Fortune Teller to

learn whether Samuel will survive or not after they have visited him in St. Luke’s

hospital sheds light on the relationship between the old memories and the future

plans or expectations. She tells them all the details about what has happened to

Samuel, which persuades these ladies except Sarah that she has got a gift of

omniscience. However, what they wonder, in fact, is what will happen to Samuel,

which makes the Grandmother ask “can you see into the future as well as the

past?” (17). The fortune teller can inform them that he will come back, but she

tells only Sarah that her brother will come back in a coffin. With the insertion of

this visit to the fortune teller into the play, Reid aims at exploring the

orchestration of memories in the minds of the populace. She suggests that who

can narrate the past is entitled to narrate the future at the same time. To elucidate,

the fortune teller proves her credibility thanks to her knowledge of the past. That

is, they believe her because she knows what has happened in the past. Therefore,

this implies that when one structures or orchestrates the knowledge of the past or

the memories in the minds of the members of the community, one is entitled to

determine or give shape to the future of that community. In addition, the

existence of a fortune teller in this play indicates the irrational and imaginary

character of the community formation.

Another play by Reid which involves examples of narration of stories and

memories as a constituent of the forgetting / remembering process is “Did You

Hear the One About the Irishman…?” In this play, as a different feature from the

previous play, along with the emphasis on what is intensely recollected, what is

deliberately forgotten is also stressed with vivid examples. First of all, Mr. Clarke

unveils to his daughter an old family story which he has been obliged to “inter”

by his wife with an item in their marriage contract:

MR. CLARKE: If I left you into a family secret, will you promise never

to tell your mother that I told you? My grandmother was Catholic. A

native Irish speaker from Donegal. I think your mother is very worried

that it might be a hereditary complaint coming out in you.

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ALLISON: Dad, I get enough jokes from Brian. Don’t you start.

MR. CLARKE: No joke, love. Just the unspoken truth. It was an

important clause in the marriage contract that it should never be

mentioned. I think over the years, your mother has convinced herself that

my grandmother was a senile old woman who only imagined she was born

a Catholic. (79)

When the “untruth” is repetitively narrated among the people, it is regarded as the

truth, and when the truth is not spoken and forgotten, it becomes the “untruth.”

As long as the truth is unspoken, it is harmless. Telling a secret or an untold story

to a member will probably disrupt the validity and reliability of previous and

following stories. Therefore, Mrs. Clarke has taken a serious action, and this way

of suppressing the truth for the sake of the creation of another “truth” is a

crucially important element of the forgetting / remembering process.

Another story that Mr. Clarke tells her daughter is not an untold story. He tells

her something he experienced concerning the stiff nature of the conflictual

structure in Northern Ireland. Mr. Clarke, a liberal thinker, who got his education

in London, has to face the harshness of the divide in his homeland. His father’s

illness puts him in charge of the factory where there are not any Catholic

employees. When he intends to employ a Catholic woman as a canteen

manageress, the workers in the plant do not hesitate to react. His father says that

his cousin George will replace Mr. Clarke if he makes one more “mistake” in

running the plant. Then, to be able to survive in his homeland, he has been

compelled to forget all the ideas he learnt in London. Allison is aware that all

these stories are told to her to brainwash and they do not discourage her from her

affair with Brian. However, these stories might have been effective on the

decision making process of many others.

The depiction of the hostility the “Troubles” have caused between twin sisters

and their families, and its consequences demonstrate clearly how the stories of

the good old days are easily suppressed and forgotten by the “Troubles.” Firstly,

Mrs. Boyd tells Allison how the two families, the Boyd and Rafferty families,

lived in the old days, and how intimate they were to each other:

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I remember the day she married Paddy Rafferty. Lovely she was. Dark

blue suit. Kid gloves. I bought her the gloves. Mother and father refused

to go to the wedding. But we went. Sammy and me. My Sammy gave her

away. Paddy was his mate. They were in the union together. Thought they

were going to change the world. Afterwards, in the pub, we all promised

one another that no matter what happened, we’d always be close. Nothing

in the world would ever drive us apart. We’re twins, Molly and me. Did

you know that? She was the oldest by half an hour. I used to be jealous of

that when we were kids. (86)

The “Troubles” have had such a destructive impact on the society that all the

promises for future closeness and fraternity and all the memories of the good

days have been forgotten in the wake of their emergence. What is constantly

recollected and reminded in the minds of the populace leads to the oblivion of

certain memories, and after some time, people make themselves believe that they

do not have these memories any longer. Besides, Mrs. Boyd draws Allison’s

attention to the heightened enmity between the sons of the two families, Joe and

Hughie, who used to be so close: “They were like brothers when they were kids.

We used to share a house near the sea, every summer. I don’t understand why all

this has happened to us. Paddy and Sammy must be turning over in their graves”

(87). The turbulent social atmosphere affecting both families, the rumors and

threatening letters sent by nobody knows who have changed the friendship

between the two cousins into revulsion. Socially constructed ties prove to be

more persistent to survive and overrun the former ones.

“Joyriders,” too, has several examples of the transmission of the old stories and

memories to the young members of the community. Firstly, the memories about

the Linen Mill have been recounted to Sandra by her granny, but Maureen has not

been able to learn about them. Thus, Reid provides a comparison between the one

who has heard stories and the one who has not:

SANDRA: My granny worked here. It used to be a linen mill ye know.

MAUREEN: I know my granny worked here too.

SANDRA: Did she ever tell ye about what it was like?

MAUREEN: She died young. I don’t remember.

SANDRA: My granny was one of the lucky ones. Lived long enough to

draw the pension. Most of her mates coughed their lungs up or died of

lead poisonin’ before they were forty. An’ they got paid even less than we

do.

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MAUREEN: It’s not that bad nowadays.

SANDRA: No, ye get to die of cancer or boredom, if the Army or the

police get ye first. (120)

Having heard the problems the Catholics have been suffering from for years in

Northern Ireland, Sarah is more conscious of the hardships Catholic minority has

to face in this country. She thinks that there is no difference between their

grandmothers’ time and the present; both generations have to encounter and

endure the same conditions. On the other hand, Maureen is of the opinion that the

conditions have been improved since their grandmothers’ time. The fact that their

reactions are divergent demonstrates that the degree of exposure to the past

memories determines their current perspectives about the “Troubles.”

Another example of the past’s influence on the present is given in Arthur’s

aspiration to be a cook. Keeping the memory of his old days fresh leads Arthur to

devote himself more and more to his job. He enjoys telling the story about his

mother and their kitchen:

Being the youngest, I was always home from school first. Mondays in the

winter was the best. My ma always did two things on a Monday, she did

the weekend washin’ and she made a big pot of vegetable broth. The

kitchen walls would be streamin’ with the steam from the washin’ and the

soup, and’ I’d come in freezin’ an’ my ma would light the gas oven an’

I’d take off the wet shoes an’ socks an’ put my feet in the oven an’ sit

drinkin’ a cup of the soup … soapsuds an’ vegetables … it sounds

revoltin’ but it was great… (124)

Arthur’s childhood experiences and freshness of the pleasure he gets out of them

shape his present. His recollection of the past experiences reinforces his plans for

the future. When he was a child, because it was cold outside, he used to get warm

in the kitchen and drink a hot soup there. At present, too, despite all the harsh

conditions in Belfast, he feels warm and secure in the kitchen, thus, he has chosen

it as a workplace. So whatever the others say - men do not cook in west Belfast -,

he does not want to leave his job.

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After Arthur was accidentally shot, the surgeons put a steel plate on his head, and

his conversation with Sandra about why his hair will not grow gives some clues

about how memory is organized in Northern Ireland:

SANDRA: Your hair’s never gonna grow will ye streak it for me?

…

ARTHUR: The surgeon says it’ll take a year or two. I don’t want it to

grow yet anyway. I hafta go intil the court scarred limpin’ an’ bald to get

the big compensation. (128)

Arthur has to prove what happened in the past in order to gain compensation in

the present. This reminds one of the utilization of the past by those who want to

justify their deeds by orchestrating the public memory in both communities,

especially the devotees or the politicians representing these factions. That is, they

ensure that public memory does not forget meticulously selected incidents in the

past, and thus, they are able to maintain their domination on the present. The

“scars” should keep their freshness so that the past will be able to keep its

supremacy on the present and some “authorities” get their “compensation.”

Sandra’s account of what she has witnessed about the relentless treatment of the

joyriders by the army is also of importance in terms of the influence of the

memories on the present. When Sandra warns Maureen not to believe that her

brother, Johnnie, has given up joyriding, the latter reminds the former of her old

days:

MAUREEN: You usta go in the back of the cars.

SANDRA: I grew out of it.

MAUREEN: Our Johnnie’s grew out of it too. (SANDRA gives her a

long look.) … I asked him why he keeps doin’ it. He says it’s a laugh.

SANDRA: It usta be a laugh. It stopped bein’ funny the day the

Brits shoutin’ halt an’ opened fire. Do ye know Geordie Quinn? They got

him right there. (She points to below her navel.) He showed me his

stitches. Another two inches an’ he’d got the DSO. (156)

This event is important for Sandra to discern how serious the Army is about the

issue of joyriding, and she wants Maureen to realize the danger her brother is in.

She remembers the incident so vividly. When the topic is joyriding, she can

narrate this experience in detail. This narration will result in not only an increased

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level of hatred towards the Brits but also the determent of Catholic children from

trying joyriding again. The parents will try hard to stop their kids from playing

this game. Thus, the Protestant forces will achieve their aims in monitoring the

Catholic minority.

“The Belle of The Belfast” is another play which revolves around the narration of

the past stories and memories, displaying their impact on the present. The first

example of this issue in the play is when Vi warns Jack reminding him of the fact

that her mother and father took him and his sister, Janet, in from Scotland when

their mother died:

JACK: That old woman should be in a home.

VI: If that old woman hadn’t taken you and Janet in when your mother

died, that’s where you’d have ended up, in a home! And don’t you ever

forget that, Jack! (185)

Jack cannot disconnect himself from the past. The past still controls the present

and determines the way or the manner the people treat the others. When one

intends to do something, s/he has to take the past into consideration. Thus, the

past memories restrict the people’s behavior, and the narration of these memories

is put to work by the people who desire to manipulate others’ present behavior.

The correlation between the past and the present is obvious in Jack’s references

to the time when he and Vi used to sing together the songs which involved the

main tenets of the Protestant ideology in the form of stories. Jack tells her that he

needs her support and friendship as in the past:

JACK: You wouldn’t fall out with me, would you, Vi? We’ve always

been friends, haven’t we?

…

JACK: I just want you to know that I’ve not forgotten how you looked

after me … Dolly always sided with Janet and Rose … you’re the only

person in the world I’ve ever enjoyed singing with … do you know that?

(They are both awkward about this declaration.) Do you still sing? (186)

These two cousins are both loyalist and the members of the same chorus – the

chorus of unionism. The intimacy in the past leads to an intimacy in the present.

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In other words, being on the same side in the past justifies being on the same side

in the present.

The same correlation is there in the story Dolly tells Janet:

In a mean abode on the Shankill Road

Lived a man called William Bloat

He had a wife, the curse of his life,

Who continually for his goat

So one day at dawn, with her nightdress on,

He cut her bloody throat.

With a razor gash he settled her hash,

Oh never was a crime so quick,

But the steady drip on the pillow slip

Of her lifeblood made him sick,

And the pool of gore on the bedroom floor

Grew clotted cold and thick.

And yet he was glad that he’d done what he had,

When she lay there stiff and still.

But a sudden awe of the angry law

Struck his soul with an icy chill.

So to finish the fun so well begun,

He resolved himself to kill.

Then he took the sheet off his wife’s cold feet,

And twisted it into a rope.

And he hanged himself from the pantry shelf,

‘Twas an easy end, let’s hope.

In the face of death with his latest breath,

He solemnly cursed the Pope. (212)

The story is a good example of how an individual’s psychology is shaped by the

past memories, and the communal psychology is not different, either. For the

maintenance of the constructed national identity, certain past deeds should be

removed from the national memory.

The song Belle sings in the end of the play has references to the obsession of the

people in Northern Ireland with the past memories and to the forgetting /

remembering process there. Particularly the last stanza deserves attention:

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O the bricks they will bleed and the rain it will weep

And the damp Lagan fog lull the city to sleep

It’s to hell with the future and live on the past. (250)

In such a context, it would not be far-fetched to suggest that the gloomy and

depressing atmosphere in Northern Ireland stems from this symbiotic correlation

between the past and the present. In other words, too much concentration on what

happened in the past and how the present deeds can or need to be justified with

allusions to the past memories has resulted in a hindrance in terms of the progress

towards the future. In this vein, what Dolly says about the relationship between

Jack and Janet is also true for the way Northern Ireland suffers from the impact of

the past memories. When she learns that Jack attempts to manipulate Janet again,

she asks: “Has that skittery ghost been getting’ at Janet again?” (195). As Dolly

states, Jack has been assigned “the job as the man of the house … to protect his

sister from temptation” (196). Therefore, his mission is to remind her of the

religious teachings they have been exposed to and the rules she has to obey. By

monitoring her closely prevents her from building a life for herself. When she

diverts from the path drawn for her, he has to drag her into the path again by

using different kinds of warnings. The surveillance of past by Jack and dominant

discourse in Northern Ireland bear strong resemblances. In such a context, one

feels obliged to think that only when the past ceases this excessive intervention in

the present of Northern Ireland can this country achieve a narration which only

and utterly belongs to itself without any reference to the UK and the Republic of

Ireland.

In “My Name, Shall I Tell You My Name?” too, the playwright explores the

significance of the narration of the stories for the communal identity. For

instance, Andy, who aims at imposing the Protestant identity on his

granddaughter, tells Billy Matchett’s story to Andrea while they are looking at

the photo of Ulster Protestant Orangemen in the Battle of the Somme:

See the soldier there with the bayonet? Spittin’ image of Billy Matchett.

Poor Billy. I was one of the lucky ones. Got injured minutes after we

cleared the trenches, so they found me quick. Operated on the knee before

it turned septic. Billy got hit further out on the battlefield. Three days

before they found him … Billy’s son, wee Billy, took over the beatin’ of

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the Lambeg drum when he grew up. Carryin’ on the name. Carryin’ on the

tradition. Which is how it should be. That’s what life’s about, child.

Knowin’ who ye are, an’ what ye come from. Don’t you ever forget that.

(257-8)

For him the Ulstermen fought fearlessly in this battle because they had to

demonstrate their loyalty to the British Army, and he also implies that the strong

adherence to the traditions is an indispensible part of their life. In other words,

knowing who their ancestors are, what they have done and what kind of traditions

they have inherited from them are of crucial importance on the way to reinforce a

Protestant ideology.

The poem Andrea recites to show that “it’s much the same, no matter what war

you die in” has some references to the dissemination of the past memories

throughout the nation. She reads from the book Poems of American Patriotism:

On Fame’s eternal camping ground

Their silent tents are spread

And Glory guards with solemn round

The bivouac of the dead. (267)

There is an analogy between how the graves of the soldiers killed on the

battleground are spread on the cemetery and how the past memories about these

soldiers and their heroic fighting are spread among the public. Disseminating the

past stories of the ancestors among the members of the nation secures a sacred

place in the communal memory. Their spirit will continue living in the past

memories and will play a vital part in the continuation of traditions. In the same

vein, Andy draws attention to how the spirit of the past influences the present by

remembering “Edward Carson, [t]he English lawyer whose rhetoric rallied the

Ulster Protestants to fight the Home Rule Bill, [and] [t]he English lawyer who

prosecuted Oscar Wilde” (272). He remarks: “Carson may be dead, but his spirit,

never!” (272). About the silence in the camping ground, it can also be inferred

that the memories akin to the graves of the dead people are silent but the narrators

give them a voice. When people die, their stories are articulated by their beloved

ones.

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Members of a society suffering from an ethno-religious conflict tend to be

creative in narrating certain events, usually the ones causing pain and suffering

since the storytelling is a vital tool for the intensification of the cleavages

between two opposing groups and the perpetuation of the violence occurring due

to these cleavages. The members of the two communities in Northern Ireland are

a clear example of this. Interestingly enough, when an incident affecting both

groups occurs in this country, both communities manipulate its narration

according to the tenets of their ideology, so divergent narrations lead to divergent

memories. At the outset of his article, Brian Conway draws attention to the

fabrication of two distinct memories in the wake of the Bloody Sunday in Derry:

Bloody Sunday, Derry, Northern Ireland, January 30, 1972, in which 13

Catholic civilians were shot dead by the British army has evoked 2

contesting memories—an “official” or elite memory and a folk memory

among the Nationalist community that, it is argued, has been omitted from

dominant memory discourses. The official memory of this life-destroying

historical event is encoded in the report of the Widgery Tribunal

established by the British government in the aftermath of Bloody Sunday

(Widgery, 1972). A second popular memory has emerged in resistance to

this that carries the remembrances of the victims’ families and of the

wider Nationalist community in Northern Ireland. I explore the mediums

through which this unofficial memory has been established and

maintained, the meanings associated with it, and how and why these have

changed over time. (305)

Then a few pages later, he explains this manipulation:

The past is not a monolithic mass. To some extent how we read the past

depends on where we sit, that is, on perspectivity. Thus, for example, the

Catholic residents who took part in the civil rights march have a very

different memory of what happened than the memory recorded in the

Widgery Report. (311)

Both groups generate and disseminate their own narrations of the past depending

on their communal ideology.

“Did You Hear the One About the Irishman…?” presents an example for the

inventiveness of both groups in creating stories to find easy solutions to certain

problems. The two lovers, Brian and Allison, are warned by their brothers against

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the reaction from the fanatics of each group. In other words, these devotees of

unionism and nationalism take a serious action regarding their love affair by

sending them a “note” through two prisoners, Hughie and Joe, whom they visit:

HUGHIE: Allison, I have to talk to you. Now listen, and listen carefully.

There’s been a lot of talk in here about you and Brian. Not very nice talk.

MRS. BOYD: There’s been talk in the street too.

HUGHIE: I know. The word is that Brian’s not just visiting his aunt. That

he’s in our street to collect information for the other side.

…

HUGHIE: They’ve found out that he’s going about with you. They think

he’s a spy, sent to get information about your Uncle Henry (89).

JOE: The old days are over.

BRIAN: No! You listen! I’m going to marry Allison Clarke. And some

cowboy threatening to blow my head is not going to stop me.

JOE: If you care about her that much, then give her up. It’s not your head

they’re threatening to blow off. It’s hers. (91)

Interestingly enough, two sides invent stories about the relationship between

Allison and Brian, and these stories are received whole heartedly by all the

members because they are programmed to believe them. None of them attempts

to learn what the situation really is.

“Joyriders” is another play in which Reid dramatizes the way the stories are

invented for the future generations. In this play, there are examples of how the

Catholic minority is suppressed by the Protestant government and how the former

is doomed to suffer from many conundrums. They leave their imprint on

communal and individual memories and will continue influencing the new

members of this community through the dissemination of these stories. The first

example is the extremely poor living conditions in Divis Flats, a residence where

the Catholics are compelled to live after their houses have been confiscated by

the Protestant government. There are several scenes in the play where the

characters sing songs which include a vivid portrayal of the horrendous

conditions. The song Arthur sings while they are leaving Kate’s house after

celebrating Arthur’s winning the court case is a good illustration:

Damp, damp, damp, damp, damp, damp, damp, damp,

Mushrooms on my ceiling, drips on the wall

Steaming soaking bedclothes, blackened flaky halls

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Spiders on the woodwork, mould on the clothes

Children lying in the beds, they’re nearly froze.

I went to the Housing Executive, to explain my situation

I said ‘I’ve got terrible damp’

They said ‘It’s is only condensation.’

No, it’s damp, damp, damp, damp,

damp, damp, damp, damp,

Toilets overflowing, carpets all wet

if you think that’s bad, take a look at that.

It’s rats, rats, rats, rats, rats, rats, rats, rats.

Rats will bite your nose off, then just slink away

they’re living in our bedrooms, they are here to stay.

Rats are full of poison, carry germs and fleas

…

(151-2)

The Catholic minority living in these flats under these conditions in West Belfast

will not easily forget this suffering caused by the Protestants. Anguish will

certainly be imprinted in their memories and will maintain the same level of

hatred for the opposing community in the minds of the future generations. It can

be asserted that even if their living conditions get better in future, the new

members of the community will be reminded of those days by the stories told by

their granmas and grandas. Renan’s argument might be interesting here:

“suffering in common unifies more than joy does, [and] [w]here national

memories are concerned, griefs are of more value than triumphs, for they impose

duties, and require a common effort” (19). Also, the solidarity of the Catholic

community and enmity towards the unionist ideology will get stronger.

The suppression the Protestant government performs on the Catholic minority is

not restricted to the unhealthy living conditions in Divis Flats. The British Army

and the police are always ready to shoot when a minor crime is committed by the

people living in this residence. Maureen’s mother is one of the victims of these

shootings. She is still alive, and Maureen describes her medical condition caused

by a plastic bullet:

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MAUREEN: Every nigh an’ again she opens her mouth as if she’s gonna

say somethin’ an then she screams. It’s awful. They give her an injection

an’ she sleeps an’ when she wakes up she just stares again.

SANDRA: Fuckin’ Brits. (119)

This experience is worse and more painful than death for her mother and

Maureen since her mother suffers and will go on suffering till her death and since

Maureen has to endure the same pain in every visit to the hospital. In other

words, the memory is persistently reinforced, which will cause an increased level

of detestation and enmity on the side of Maureen and everyone who listens to the

story, towards the British and the Protestant community in Northern Ireland.

Maureen’s death has triggered another process of story invention on both sides.

She has stolen the clothes two women bought in Marks & Spencer because she

wants to look beautiful to her lover. She has been spotted by the cameras and the

police come to YTP building. She attempts to flee but is caught by a bullet from

the Army while she is running between a joyriding car and the Army. Sandra

brings her body to YTP building, and though Kate tells her to cover the body, she

shouts: “Look at her. Everybody should look at her” (171). Her sentence might

go on as follows: “and remember her!” She insists that the people around should

know the true story and tell it to their kids. One more memory is inserted in the

minds of the Catholics. The reflection that this incident will probably cause on

the other side of the conflict is clearly summarized by Sandra to her friends and

Kate: “Do you know what it’ll say in the papers the morra? ‘Shoplifter gets

shot.’” Sandra draws her friends’ attention to how Maureen’s death will be

reflected in the newspapers directed by the Protestants and to which part of the

truth will be covered to make a “true” story. This is a sort of orchestration of the

public memory by using the media.

The invention of stories is dramatized in another play, “The Belle of The

Belfast,” too. Firstly, at the outset of the play, in order to provide a background,

Dolly’s story is told by her daughters, Rose and Vi, in two utterly different

versions:

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ROSE: My mother, the Belle of the Belfast City, happened to be

performing in an Orange Hall in Belfast one night when my father Joe

Horner was at a lodge meeting in an upstairs room. They say he heard her

singing and walked out of the meeting and into the concert like a man

under a spell. And that was it. They eloped a fortnight later, and from then

on she gave up the stage and did all her dressing-up and singing and

dancing just for him.

VI: Our Rose is nuthin’ if not romantic. The truth is that my mother’s

family were still dressin’ her up as if she was thirteen instead of goin’ on

nineteen, an’ trailin’ her round draughty out halls to sing to audiences of

twenty or thirty. My father took her away from all that, and waited on her

hand and foot for the rest of his life. Still as they say, it’s a poor family

can’t afford to support one lady. (180-1)

The story of how their father and mother first met has been distorted in Rose’s

and Vi’s narrations, so nobody knows which story reflects the truth or whether

they are true or not. This example points out how the stories are manipulated as

the narrators re-create the story by either adding some extra details or deleting

some points from the actual story. Once a sort of distortion takes place and gets

spread among the public, then returning the story back to its authentic form is

almost impossible.

Vi’s expectation that Belle’s experiences and observations during her holiday in

Belfast will help her construct her story of the conflictual atmosphere in this city

and Northern Ireland in general deserves attention. Vi expresses this expectation

by enunciating: “I want her to think well of Belfast and have a holiday she’ll

never forget” (188). She hopes that what she will experience in this city during

her holiday will generate a permanent and wholly “true” image, in her mind, of

the social and political situation in Belfast:

Before I came here, I had two images of Belfast. A magical one conjured

by my grandmother’s songs and stories and recitations, and a disturbing

one of the marches and banners and bands on the six o’clock news …

They are both true, but not the whole truth of this bizarre and beautiful

city. (213)

The story of Belfast she has invented since the day she came there cannot

encapsulate the whole truth about the city. Therefore, Vi anticipates that Belle

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will have other memoires which will contribute to her picture of this city by

overrunning the previous ones.

Rose’s concluding remark regarding the difference between her version of the

stories and Vi’s version presents another instance of the invention of stories

through which the society is manipulated and the divide is persevered. She

responds to Vi’s accusation of demeaning the truth of past incidents by saying:

Belfast abounds with half-baked sentimental stories like that. About the

good old days and how well we all got on with our Uncle Tom Catholic

neighbors. Sure we did. As long as they stayed indoors on the twelfth of

July and didn’t kick up a fuss when Kick-the-Pope bands marched past

their houses, beating big drums to remind them of their place here. The

stories are myths. Fables. Distortions of the truth. (222)

Rose endeavors to attract Vi’s attention to the fact that in order to veil how the

Catholic minority has been writhing in agony due to the suppression of Protestant

majority in Northern Ireland, unionists have constructed countless stories

reinforcing the opposite idea. She accentuates that the stories might be a very

striking instrument to distort the truth, and to preserve the social strife in this

country.

The members of both communities in Northern Ireland attach considerable

importance to commemoration activities. For them, taking part in such activities

as parades, processions or demonstrations manifests the loyalty of these members

to their communities and the solidarity among themselves, as “representations of

the past are preserved through [these] social practices” (Conway 310). In his

book in which he puts under scrutiny the parades and visual displays in Northern

Ireland, Jarman explicates the significance of their participation in these activities

with the help of Connerton’s argument: “it is the active participation in ritual

events that is the significant means of encoding social memory into the individual

body” (8). Then he explains their repetitive and unchanging nature, which makes

them powerful:

Rituals are often repetitive, both in their internal structure and within the

calendrical cycle; which further enhances the feeling that they never

change. The rhythmic patterning helps confirm their natural state as an

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integral part of society. It is the formality and repetitiousness that give

much of the power to ritual and generate a sense of belonging, a sense of

order and a sense of continuity between the individual and the group, and

between the group, the larger world and its past. The repetition might be

the weekly visit to church, or it might be the annual attendance at the local

war memorial; but the apparent invariance in ritual routine, its resistance

to change, its archaic or formal language or dress, all imply and assume a

legitimacy derived from the past, based on the continuity and tradition (9).

The participation in these rituals leads the people in both communities to get the

feeling of revivification of what their ancestors lived. Connerton argues that

“through physical involvement each of the participants shares in the primal

suffering or the privations of the communal ancestors” (qtd in Jarman 10).

Jarman puts the emphasis on this “re-enactment of the past” and notes that “by

such a re-enactment, the past, now mythified and decontextualized, is

transformed into an ‘unchanging and unchangeable substance’ and becomes an

indispensible part of the present” (11). In fine, the commemoration activities

prove to be a crucial part of the forgetting / remembering process that is

implemented in Northern Ireland.

Christina Reid’s plays exhibit how commemoration activities have become an

indispensible instrument employed by both communities to organize the social

memory of their group. In “Tea in a China Cup,” for example, the play opens

with the sound of the song “Up Come the Man” which is played by an Orange

band preparing for the Parade to be held on the twelfth of July, and Sarah listens

to and watches the band while it is passing by with great enthusiasm. Like every

commemoration activity, this one, too, aims to honor and keep alive the memory

of a historical event: This parade celebrates the Protestant king, William of

Orange’s victory against James II, the Catholic king who escaped to Ireland from

England in the 17th century. The playwright also provides the lyrics of the song

that every Protestant member knows: “Up come the man with a shovel in his

hand, and he says boys go no farther, for we’ll get a great big rope and we’ll hang

the bloody Pope, on the twelfth of July in the morning” (3). The parade helps the

Protestant faction remember and foster their enmity for and opposition against the

papacy which is highly valued by the Catholics. Its function is twofold: it makes

the unionist side recall what they basically value and who their enemy is; and it

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reminds the Catholics of the fact that the Protestant community is their opposing

group and that as a majority in Northern Ireland, the loyalists have got supremacy

over the nationalist side.

The play also exemplifies how a loyalist member has made the Orange Parade

into a vital occasion which has to be participated. Even though Sarah is

terminally ill, she yearns for a visit to the Field. Participating in this parade has

become an indispensible part of her life. As it is clear in Beth’s case, Sarah’s

group identity has dominated her individual identity, so she needs such occasions

to reinforce her identification with Protestantism.

Another play by Reid which displays the significance of commemoration

activities in relation to the forgetting / remembering process in Northern Ireland

is “My Name, Shall I Tell You My Name?” Andrea talks about what her

grandfather will be doing on the anniversary of the Battle of the Somme:

My grandfather will have been awake since daybreak. It’s the seventieth

anniversary of the Battle of the Somme today. He’ll have made his own

bed. It’s the only domestic thing he ever could do, making his own bed.

They taught him that in the Army. He’ll be sitting, waiting for the British

Legion car to collect him for the parade. (271)

This parade is one of the strong bonds which ties him to the Protestant

community so the day is very special for him. Also, as a veteran of this battle, he

is honored by the British Army, which, once more, reinforces his loyalist identity.

Reid’s plays dramatize characters who are sensitive to the memories represented

in such objects as photos, pictures, newspaper extracts. They establish a strong

link between these objects and the memories. Hence, the spatial link with these

objects enables them to maintain a relationship with the past. For instance, in

“Tea in a China Cup,” photos of the soldiers from the family on the walls of the

house are of crucial importance. The playwright allocates extra space for the

depiction of these photos in stage directions:

An enlarged sepia photo of the grandfather in First World War uniform

hangs in an ornate frame on the back wall. (10)

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Grandmother’s house. The grandfather is hanging a large framed photo

of Samuel in Army uniform beside the two photos of himself and Samuel.

(43)

Below the three photos of the Grandmother, Samuel and Sammy is a china

cabinet. A large photo of Beth and Stephen on their wedding day is on the

top of the cabinet. (54)

By means of these photos, the characters have ensured that the memories of what

they value can survive, and they feel secure to see that there are certain things

which will connect them to these memories, thus, to their present and future.

The Grandmother’s keeping Samuel’s letters, and the telegrams informing his

condition at the hospital and his death, and the piece of newspaper published after

he died is a significant example of museumizing in the forgetting / remembering

process. After Sarah reads the newspaper report of Samuel’s death, the

Grandmother utters: “Cut it out, I’ll put it away with the telegram and the letters”

(20). She will probably keep them in a special place in her house and “visit” them

as museum objects to refresh her son’s memory. It is not mentioned in the play

but it is highly probable that the Grandmother has used these objects as visual

representations while telling Beth the family stories.

Sarah’s persistent reluctance to leave her family house when the “Troubles”

begin manifests how her house and the things in the house to which many

memories are attached have been museumized in her imagination. All efforts of

Beth and a sergeant fail to convince her to leave the house though it is under

serious threat:

BETH: You can’t stay here alone. You have got to come home with me.

SARAH: I can’t leave my house.

BETH: You’ll have to …

SARAH: I won’t … it’s all I have got …

BETH: You’ve got me …

SARAH: I’m not abandoning this house … (54)

Her imagination and formation of the Protestant communal identity have been

mostly shaped by the memories, the stories, photos, the china cabinet and all the

other things in this house. The destruction of this house intimidates her because

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all she has constructed in her mind concerning her identity will fade away with its

demolition. Then, in order to convince her mother, Beth strips the things in the

house of their special meaning her mother has attached to them by saying that

“Mum, they’re only …things … bits and pieces … they can all be replaced …”

(57). To which Sarah replies: “They’re my life” (57).

Another play in which Reid dramatizes how museumizing objects are employed

as an instrument to keep the past memories as fresh as possible is “My Name,

Shall I Tell You My Name?” Andy keeps such materials as drawings of his

granddaughter, newspapers, photos, war medals in his old tin box. His

granddaughter, Andrea, says about his old tin box: “Who does he talk to now, I

wonder? Maybe he just talks. To the wall … to the memories locked away in his

old tin box. I wonder if he still keeps my very first drawing there …” (254). He

has constructed an individual museum for himself with the objects to which he

has attached the memories of the past events. It gives him a sense of security

since through them he maintains his bondage with the past. This maintenance is

of crucial importance because he can secure his Protestant and loyalist identity

only through what he has succeeded in the past and how significantly this success

is appreciated by the community. One specific example of this kind of

reminiscence is when he shows other people the photo of his friends and himself

when they were in the Army ready to fight against the French and recalls their

names:

(Taking an old photo from the tin box.) Man, them were the days with the

lads in France. Real men. Heroes. Ulster Protestant Orangemen. We’ll

never see their like again … Joseph Sloan, Billy Matchett, Isaac Carson,

Samuel Thompson, Hugh Montgomery … (255)

He reinforces his membership to the group of Ulster Protestant Orangemen

because the heroic deeds they performed in the Battle of the Somme are unique to

them. Every time he “visits” this object, he remembers that he has been one of

these heroes, which buttresses his loyalist identity.

Andy’s travel from Derry to the City Hall in Belfast in order to see the picture

painted to commemorate the Battle of the Somme presents another example for

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museumizing. Andrea tells what happened then and Andy reads the inscription

below the painting:

ANDREA: It was the first proper painting I ever saw. It hangs in the City

Hall in Belfast. We went there on a train from Derry when I was about

seven, to visit his eldest daughter. But his real reason for going, was that

he wanted to stand with me in from of that painting … and teach me

another poem … …

ANDY: The Battle of the Somme. Attack by the Ulster Division. First of

July 1916. Presented by the Lord Mayor Alderman James Johnston and

the Corporation of the City of Belfast as a gift to the citizens from the

Ulster Volunteers to commemorate ‘one of the greatest feats of arms in

the annals of the British Army.’ (256)

The picture painted by a Protestant artist presents and points out the visitors that

the soldiers from Northern Ireland or Ulster Protestant Orangemen fought bravely

for the British Crown. The existence of this museumized object guarantees that

the new generation will be aware of the heroic deeds of their ancestors and will

be proud of being a loyalist. Like the narration of the past stories, in the painting

the artist is free to add or delete any detail so that the desired image can be

constructed in the minds of the loyalist Protestant community.

There is one more function of the picture as a museumized object in the play. In

order to emphasize how he is honored as the only veteran still alive, he states:

They always look after their own. An’ they’re gettin’ my picture painted.

They’re gonna hang it up in Legion Hall. I’m the only one left from the

Great War, and they want to honour me. I used to draw pictures myself.

But I never kept it up, an’ I lost the way of it. (276)

The sole reason for getting his picture painted is not to honor him. Being hung in

the Legion Hall, his picture becomes a museumized object which will transmit

the past memories to the future generations of the Protestant community implying

that their ancestors fought for the Great Britain so as to show their loyalty to the

crown. Regarding the parallelism between painting pictures and the narration of

past memories, it is implied that “they” paint his picture of Northern Ireland in

his mind and that he cannot construct a story of his own. In other words, he is

unable to picture an image in his mind if the others, the system, the traditions or

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the Protestant ideology do not allow him to do so. In brief, social identity

formation processes overrun their individual identity formation processes, by

passifying them in narrating their own stories.

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CHAPTER IV

CONCLUSION

Reformation and then the Enlightenment caused great changes in the thought

system of the Western World by leading into the weakening of Christianity

whose authority had permeated every sphere of life for centuries. One of the

fields in which religious thought was not influential any more was the formation

of countries. Religion which used to unite the people started to lose its power.

Dynastic empires which derived their legitimacy from divinity were doomed to

collapse. Anderson locates the birth of the concept of nation at that time: “The

concept [of nation] was born in an age in which Enlightenment and Revolution

were destroying the legitimacy of the divinely-ordained, hierarchical dynastic

realm” (7). Nation was a secular basis where the people would agree to gather

and settle, and had to replace the religious thought and gain the supremacy it had

spread in every domain of life for ages. In other words, the cultural foundation

cemented by religion in the society to guarantee the legitimacy of the empires had

to be supplanted with a national culture. This replacement was only possible with

a change in the imagination of community: Nation was considered as an artificial,

invented and imagined entity; thus, nation building process required making the

people imagine or invent a nation and a national identity in their minds. This

process, the construction of this imaginary phenomenon, involved various

elements that should be monitored.

To re-orchestrate the national imagination, organization of the social memory is

required. Certain incidents in the history of the nation are chosen to forget, while

memories or stories of certain events are reinforced in the minds of the members

of the nation. Through this process, they are constantly reminded of their

common values, stories, myths, memories, customs and traditions. Remembering

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what they have in common leads people to feel a sense of belonging and

solidarity. This process of remembrance is mostly implemented by the education

systems which play a crucial part in the forgetting / remembering process. The

transmission of common memories, myths, values and traditions to the

prospective members of the nation is possible only through a unitary educational

system. While educating the people what is unique to their nation, how their

community is distinguished from the others is also emphasized. That is, the

imposition of a sense of uniqueness on the members of nation also involves an

intensive stress on the aspects of exclusivity. This stress is fulfilled through an

otherization process which includes a clear definition of what constitutes

“outside” and of what separates and differentiates the nation from this “outside.”

Along with these elements, a common territory or a homeland is one of the

essential building blocks of a nation.

The reciprocal relationship between nation and the state is of considerable

importance in generating all these above mentioned elements. The existence of a

state entails a national identity for its citizens so that it can convince its people to

approve the legitimacy of the laws.

Northern Ireland is a state where these elements cannot be generated, and the

religious culture cannot be replaced with a national culture, so a national identity

has not been constructed yet. The Protestants, who support the continuation of the

union with the United Kingdom, and the Catholic community, which yearns for

ridding the island of the British rule, have been in a constant conflict. Because a

national identity unique to these people cannot be forged in this state due to the

sectarian conflict, they endeavor to tether themselves to externally constructed

national identities: The Protestants adopt Britishness while the Catholics consider

themselves Irish. However, these “adopted” national identities do not reflect the

truth because the former cannot choose Irishness as a national identity because

Irishness has been monopolized by the Catholics, and cannot truly adopt

Britishness as a national identity because of the varieties in the social factors they

have. Likewise, the latter do not call themselves British because their Catholicism

involves an Irish identity with the rejection of the British rule, and they cannot

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truly entitle themselves as Irish due to the differences of social conditions. This

situation leads them to adhere more to their communal identities which are the

sole route to a national identity, though self-delusional. Therefore, they do not

want the ongoing conflict to finish, and both sides use the elements of nation

building process to maintain their religious community, not to create a nation.

What Christina Reid dramatizes in her plays “Tea in a China Cup,” “Did You

Hear the One About the Irishman … ?,” “Joyriders,” “The Belle of the Belfast

City,” and “My Name, Shall I Tell You My Name?” is the reluctance of the

people to call a halt to the sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland and the

employment of the forgetting / remembering process for the purpose of keeping

the chasm between the two groups as wide as possible. They are unwilling to stop

the civil strife, which makes both groups tether to their traditions more strongly,

which contributes to the otherization process to reinforce their social identity and

which leads them to impose their working ideology on their new members whose

divergence from traditions will definitely pose a threat to the community. The

forgetting / remembering process reinforces the maintenance of the

intercommunal conflict through the narration of the old stories and memories,

generation of new stories, commemoration activities and museumizing certain

objects.

About the reluctance in question and its reasons, in “Tea in a China Cup,” Sarah’s

adherence to the traditions of her community is emphasized. Although she is

terminally ill, Sarah leaves her bed and watches and listens to the Orange Bands

practicing for the Twelfth of July. She also wants Beth to take her to the parade

for the last time despite her illness. In “Did You Hear the One About the Irishman

… ?,” Reid demonstrates the efforts of the two communities to maintain the

chasm between them. The marriage of Allison and Brian is utterly opposed by the

fierce supporters of the conflict since they are from different communities. The

militants of both groups create imaginary missions of espionage for these lovers,

who do not actually support the conflict. They are told to finish this relationship.

When they ignore this warning, they are murdered and the murderers are and will

be unknown. So this becomes another incident which will cause to keep and

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widen the gap between the two groups. “Joyriders” displays how the Protestant

majority externalized and marginalized the Catholic minority by confiscating

their houses and by making them live under harsh conditions in Divis Flats in

West Belfast. These Catholics who are deprived of any kind of employment

opportunity are labelled as criminals, and army forces could shoot them at any

time of the day. “The Belle of the Belfast City” demonstrates how the Protestant

community otherizes the Catholics in Northern Ireland. Rose, as a liberal thinker,

tries to make her cousin Jack and her elder sister Vi aware of the otherization

they have constructed against the Catholics in their minds and of how this

minority is suppressed in this state which, as Rose notes, was created just to put

the Protestants into a majority position. “My Name, Shall I Tell You My Name?”

evinces that any kind of digression from the Protestant ideology or rejection of its

values encounters the punishment of being expelled. Though they were friends

before the war, Andy excludes Edward Reilley from the Protestant community in

his imagination because he refused to accept the medal and worked for the Labor

Party after the war. Andy disowns his granddaughter who got married to a man

whose mother is Pakistani, which he considers a disloyalty to her community.

Concerning the forgetting / remembering process in “Tea in a China Cup” Beth

has been told the old family stories by her mother, grandmother and great aunt

who aimed at imprinting the Protestant ideology on her identity, and her mother

expects her to transmit these stories to the future generations so that the

communal identity can survive in this family. In “Did You Hear the One About

the Irishman … ?” along with the emphasis on what is intensely recollected, what

is intentionally forgotten is also stressed with vivid examples. The Rafferty and

Boyd families, who used to be so close, have become enemies with the

emergence of the “Troubles.” These people are made to forget certain events,

while the stories of certain incidents are strongly remembered. Mr. Clarke’s

revelation of the secret about his grandmother shows that when an “untruth” is

repetitively narrated among the people, it appears as “truth,” and when a “truth”

is not spoken and forgotten, it becomes an “untruth.” “Joyriders” exemplifies the

creation of new stories to be narrated to the future generations along with the

narration of the old ones. The Protestants’ depriving the Catholics of their houses

102

and dragging them into Divis Flats where they have to struggle to survive under

very harsh conditions has become a story. It will be definitely told to the new

members of the Catholic minority in the future to raise hatred towards the

opposing side even though they stop living there. Maureen’s murder by the army

forces because she has stolen some clothes is also one of the countless stories

created in the streets of Divis Flats. “The Belle of the Belfast City” includes

examples of the inventiveness of the people in producing stories and of how the

narrators can distort or recreate the stories in their narration. The stories that Rose

and Vi tell about how their father and mother met and got married are thoroughly

different, which indicates that the truth is distorted and manipulated through

narration of stories. “My Name, Shall I Tell You My Name?” mostly focuses on

the museumization of certain objects to attach them to the events they represent.

In this play, Andy keeps such materials as drawings of his granddaughter,

newspapers, photos, war medals in his old tin box so that he can keep the past

memories they represent as fresh as possible. When he desires to re-live his

memories, he opens his box and visits his individual museum. As can be seen in

the above given references, Reid’s five plays include examples of the

unwillingness of the people in Northern Ireland to give a halt to the conflict since

it reinforces their adherence to their communal values, strengthens the

otherization process and leads them to inculcate the ideology of their faction to

the new members. The plays also show how the forgetting / remembering process

causes the continuation of the sectarian conflict with the help of the old stories

and memories, creation of new stories for future, commemoration activities and

museumization of certain objects.

103

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